


Chesterfield Cigarettes, The Saturday Evening Post, and Masculinity

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Masculinity verse [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 17:48:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 57,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sniper and Spy begin to build an unlikely relationship... Sniper has his secrets, but secrets are one thing the Spy can understand, and in the end, obstacles are there to be overcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

The courtship is not a normal one by any means. Nothing about their relationship could be called normal. But the Spy is willing to call it a courtship, the way he finds himself eying the other man, the way he sometimes gives himself away for an excuse to fight honestly, the way he would rather have a snatch of conversation than an easy kill after winning a round.

There’s no doubt in his mind that he’s found a sort of kindred spirit in the Sniper. He’s caught looks aimed his way, and the flash of a rifle sight that didn’t end in his being shot. There’s a smile that he likes to think is saved for him.

He proposes a hotel room on the weekend, after a few drinks, when he feels like the energy between them won’t remain fit for public for much longer, and he knows he’s not alone in feeling it, and is momentarily poleaxed when the Sniper refuses.

There is a coldness after that, that lasts for days, and he hates himself for the way he jumps through hoops to get the friendly rivalry back.

“It’s not personal.” The Sniper sighs, letting him live after the round goes to RED, leaving them alone in the nest. “I mean, it’s not you. But I’m… not… like you. All right?”

He frowns, taking a step forward— certainly, the Sniper could kill him, but it’s hardly the worst turn the conversation could take now. “Like hell you are not, I have seen it— You want what I do. If you’re… scared of this, or something, at least be man enough to admit it, don’t hide behind some false—”

The other man snorts, clapping a hand over the Spy’s mouth. “You’re not gonna accept it?”

“I could accept your refusing me.” He tears the hand away, eyes still blazing. “That is your decision, even if you and I both know you have thought about it. But I won’t have you lie to me about the reasons. Tell me you think it is a bad risk, tell me you would rather be… friends, or something, but don’t tell me you are not like me, don’t pretend you’re any better, don’t pretend you don’t look at men like I do.”

Another snort, a little shake of the head. “All right. I look at men. At you. But I do think it’s a bad risk. Happy?”

“I’ll survive.” The Spy rolls his eyes, tugging uncomfortably at the hem of his blazer. “Let me know if you reassess this risk, but it is not the end of the world for me not to have you. If… if this is out of the way, am I free to talk to you sometimes still? I would think I am a bad risk either way.”

“Don’t be bitter. Doesn’t suit you.”

The Spy disappears after that, but he reappears, near the end of the next round, and every so often, sometimes to do his job, sometimes not to do it very seriously.

“Is it because I am a bad risk?” He asks, when Friday night rolls around, when he’s free to follow the Sniper out to his camper, to hang around outside it. “I mean… If it is the companies, all right, or if it is local decency laws, or… But I… My job… Any kind of affair is risky, but you don’t think I—?”

“Nah. I told you it’s not personal. I just… don’t. It’s always a bad risk.”

The Spy nods, satisfied for a moment. “Because I would never betray you, if you… I know, spies, but…”

“It’s not you.”

“Is it because you have never seen my face? You may. And we have never learned each other’s names, but that could change. My real name. If you want it— Even if you still think sex is a bad risk, I mean… Well, I trust you with it.”

“The one your parents gave you?”

He nods. “Absolutely. The realest name I have.”

There’s a bitter little laugh, and the Sniper shakes his head, and motions the Spy to sit next to him. “My parents didn’t give me my real name. They don’t know I changed it.”

“Oh.”

He whispers, and the Spy nods, and whispers back. They’re a mile away from the nearest living soul, and they whisper just the same.

“It suits you. I suppose that’s why you chose it. I do find it odd that between the two of us, you seem to have invented yourself more completely than I… whenever I give myself a name of my own choosing, I discard it at the end of a job. It must keep them safe, not to be… not to be tied to you like that.”

“I like to think so.” He wraps his arms around his knees. He’s given the Spy his only folding chair, happy enough to sit out in the dust. “D’you want to come in? You’ve never properly seen the place, have you?”

If the Spy is ecstatic at the offer, he hides it well. He’s seen the outside of the camper, even begged a ride in the cab of the battered truck it’s fixed to, he has shared a cigarette and a beer in the shadow of the hulking eyesore, but he has never been inside.

It’s clean, mostly. It’s nothing like either base. Aside from a little cupboard of hanging uniforms and the lettering on a chipped mug, there’s no red splashed about the place, just yellows and greens and brown.

He takes his mask off, inside, after checking to see the curtains are drawn as tight as possible, to see that clothespins already held them shut.

The Sniper hands him a photograph, wordless.

He doesn’t need to ask— he can recognize the Sniper well enough in the face of the older man, can reasonably assume the identity of the plump woman in the apron.

“I didn’t know you had a sister. Did you take this?”

“No.” The Sniper’s mouth is tight, everything about him guarded. “And I don’t.”

“Who is she?”

“Victoria.” He sneers a little. “Fuck but I always hated the name Victoria. And she never really was… not like in the picture.”

“I meant… who is she to you?” He looks between the man and the photograph. A half sister, perhaps, though the woman seemed to take just as much pride and ownership in the girl as the man she resembled. A cousin?

“It’s not important. Nevermind. This was a mistake.” The Sniper grabs the photo back, turns away— turns away without flinching at exposing his back, and that’s the telling detail the Spy needs, the realization that there’s something, some shame or fear, that makes hiding his face a greater priority than the self-preservation he’s learned.

Then again, standing there without his mask, the Spy doesn’t feel he poses much threat. He has a knife on him, but he won’t reach for it. In his mind, he sees the girl— Victoria, who never really was— looking away from the camera, uncomfortable in her dress, all sunburnt and scratched.

He doesn’t ask ‘is she you’— even if he needed to, in that moment, he doesn’t dare. But he moves to touch the Sniper’s shoulder as lightly as he can.

“I am not a very bad risk, I don’t think.” He smiles, faltering, his face unused to the genuine offer of warmth and comfort. “And the people in your photographs are safe from me. And you can kick me out, of course, and I’ll see you on Monday, and if you would like to pretend we didn’t talk tonight, we can do that. But I’ve found that I do like you, you know. For what it is worth.”

“For what it’s worth.” The Sniper repeats, shrugging. “Nothing has to change?”

“Nothing has to. Anything may, but nothing has to. You’re a good man, which I hear is a rare commodity anywhere, let alone here.”

“Please go.” The Sniper whispers, and it’s hard to tell if he’s angry, but the Spy leaves instead of asking.

Monday morning, he feels too hesitant to engage in a fight, but when he creeps up to the nest, he’s pulled into a hug.

“That’s for… What it’s worth.” The Sniper flashes him an awkward smile. “Dunno how good I am.”

“You are a consummate professional, mon ami. That is good enough for me.” He shrugs. “Well, and it does not hurt, your being handsome.”

“Up for a good fight?” The Sniper offers, and his smile is a little less awkward, as he adopts a good stance for it.

“If you are.” The Spy nods, flipping out his knife and adopting a fencing pose. “It would be my pleasure.”


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy is introduced to something new...

"I just wanted to prepare you, that's all. Don't roll your eyes, it's... Well, not what you expected when you started after me."

The Spy reaches over, laying a hand over the flat expanse of the Sniper's stomach, touch warm through the layers of his shirts. "All right. I am not going to faint in horror, you know. It is a human body you have under there?" He teases gently. "I think as long as that is the case, I can handle you."

The Sniper unbuttons his uniform shirt enough to shrug out of it, before placing the Spy's hand back over his belly a moment, to stroke through the thick layer of white cotton.

It has still been a strange courtship, with knife fights and wrestling matches as much as any sweet words, and there have been stolen kisses, here and there, and another weekend between the revelation and this one, where there was no hotel room.

"Tonight, just show me what you do." The Spy soothes. "I promise, when it comes to love, I am a very quick learner."

"I pretty much take care of myself... Can't really go around picking up blokes. Maybe if I pretended to be a girl, but then they have to be desperate to pick up a girl ugly as me." He laughs, before pulling a face. "And, course, they wanna fuck you, and I don't get fucked. Suck cock, sure, but... Good luck getting anything in return, 'cept your drinks for free, and I can buy my own drinks."

"You can buy my drinks." The Spy grins at him, rolling over onto his back, to lie a little closer. "Mm... For you? I'll even drink them. I might even get tipsy, knowing I have a nice, strong escort to keep other men from taking advantage of me."

"Yeah?" He laughs.

"I used to be young and pretty." The Spy answers, in all seriousness, though the mirthful twist doesn't leave his mouth. "Starting out in my career. Not... not beautiful, of course, I still had a couple... 'strong' features, but I was pretty enough when I tried to be. I seduced a couple of men for work, and the rest for fun. That was in Paris, where you could go seduce men for fun..."

"I never used to be pretty." The Sniper smiles, reaching over to run his fingertips along the crown of the Spy's head, through his mask. "I got dad's nose... dad's most things, really. Helped."

"Mm. Do I get to get under this shirt now?" The Spy stretched his arm back across his own body, to pluck at the undershirt. "Or do I take something off first?"

The Sniper let him help, in pulling off the plain cotton tee, to reveal a tighter tank beneath.

"Better than a bra." He shrugs, face heating. "Least, for days I don't have to jog on stairs."

The Spy peels this away as well, and jogging up and down stairs, he decides, is the only thing the Sniper could possibly need a bra for.

There is a softness, around the nipples, that could be mistaken for flabbiness if the man had another ounce of spare fat anywhere else on his body.

"Never cared enough to have 'em... you know, hacked off." Another little shrug, another glance away. "Not many people get me naked to start with, and they're pretty small now..."

"That is fair." The Spy nuzzled at one nipple, and then at the big triangle of hair above and between, that began high on the Sniper's chest and tapered down. Not as thick as he'd once expected, just based on what he knew of Australians in general, but thick enough to pet at, lay his cheek against... and dark, a nice picture. If it wasn't for the complete flatness of his belly, he could walk around shirtless without drawing any notice, the hair almost enough distraction. "It's your business. Still smaller than the Heavy's, I would bet."

"Not everyone's... okay, with it." He grins, for less than a second, urging the Spy up for a quick kiss before laying back with a sigh and letting him return to his explorations, pleasure and relaxation taking hold as the Spy tugs at the chest hair gently between his lips, flattens his nose into it, smears an opened mouth kiss from the base of the Sniper's sternum up to the dip of his clavicle.

"Do you know what I like most in a man?" The Spy moans, his hands curving to fit at the Sniper's narrow hips.

"What?" The Sniper asks, and the honesty in the question stops the Spy.

He'd expected flirtation, seduction, suggestions... Not bewilderment.

"I like masculinity. You, mon grand, ooze it."

"Ought to, for what I pay for it." The Sniper jokes weakly, and the Spy just rubs his face against that chest again with a soft sound.

"The way you move, the way you talk, the way you fight, the way you smoke, the way you spit-- which is disgusting, by the way, but it is one of your less objectionable filthy habits-- There is no one else who... who is so... pure about it. I see posturing! I see unattractive useless bulk! I see this farce of manhood paraded around with beer and muscles and explosives and talk of tits and car engines! And then... sometimes I would see you disappear off into the desert with a knapsack and wander back after the weekend carrying part of some dead thing I didn't know lived out here, or... or out, just... being."

"When'd you see me wander off into the desert?"

"Little late to pretend I haven't been eying you, isn't it?" The Spy smiles. "You don't do these things to brag about them, you do it all because it is in your nature. I am desperately attracted to it all."

"Even without the... parts in working order?"

"I'll live." Another wry smile, and another kiss to the center of the Sniper's chest. "Besides... you're a pretty good time out of the sack. So. Show me what you do for yourself, if you don't have anything you like with a partner, and I'll... I'll learn to do it for you. Or I can watch, if you really do prefer-- having established my interest in your self-sufficient nature."

The Sniper laughs at that, before wrestling the Spy's tie off. "You're still overdressed, Spook."

"So I am. My apologies." He grins, eyes twinkling, as he strips down to his own waist, guiding the Sniper's hands to roam his ribcage. "Mm... may I also say, I am crazy for a pair of hands that have known any kind of work? I never pick up calluses, myself... do you suppose the difference is in the guns themselves, or the gloves?"

"Dunno. Not complaining." He pauses before stripping one of the Spy's gloves away. The hand beneath is softer than his own have been since he was barely more than a kid, clean and neat, nails well-trimmed. There is a little air of the aristocratic about the Spy's naked hands. Outside of their gloves, they no longer seem to belong to a killer, but to a gentleman.

The trousers are the next step, the two parting to shimmy out of their own, and the Sniper's nerves do not evaporate, but they lessen considerably at the distraction of the Spy's sock garters.

"D'you know what I like in a man?" He asks shyly, his hand wrapping around the curve of the Spy's calf.

"What?"

"This." His thumb rubbed over the sock garter, and the Spy looks at him incredulously.

"The sock garters?"

"Well-- Well, not just that. Just... Forget it."

"No, tell me." The Spy leans in, smiling. "I know, cher, I am a man of great refinement. It is all right if that sweeps you off your feet."

"Refinement. Yeah." He nods. It isn't the whole truth, but the whole truth can wait. He rolls them down to the mattress, to lie atop the Spy, to let his hand slide all the way up that leg, to tease at him through his boxers. "Love refinement..."

They kiss, a while, with the Spy's arms around the Sniper's back, and he marvels at how he can stroke down the man's spine without spoiling the mood between them. But then, he's let his gloves go without a second thought...

When the last kiss breaks, the Sniper rummages around the floor by the bed for his overnight bag, pulling his toiletry kit out and tossing it to the side, only to find a second, identical leather case. He hands it to the Spy without a word.

There are two items inside. The first the Spy recognizes immediately, and the second is a little bullet-sized oval, chrome, with no mark of any kind except for a stamped on outline of Australia. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he brushes a thumb over the little engraving and it turns out to be a button, the thing coming to life in his hand.

The Sniper laughs, taking it and turning it off.

"What was that?!"

"What do you think?" He raises an eyebrow. "Hard to find things this discrete-- hell, impossible to find any personal electronics outside Oz that don't feel like they're coming out of the stone age. This is what I use."

"You don't use this?" The Spy picks up the recognizably cock shaped item.

"Well... I mean, I use it. Sort of. I don't... It doesn't go in me, it's mine." He sighs, as he watches the Spy's incomprehension fail to resolve into understanding, and he lifts up the little silver device, then the fake cock. "This. Is what I use to get off. This. Is more for the... the illusion. Just... you'll see."

It takes him a moment to steel himself, and then he's slipping out of the briefs, and even knowing it was coming, the Spy has a hard time reconciling everything. The Sniper's clitoris is certainly large, as the Spy's understanding of female bits goes, but it is unmistakably a clitoris, and the Spy has never been on friendly terms with the clitoris.

For the Sniper, he's willing to learn, thinks he could think of it as a very small cock, if he could just get used to it. Repeating it in his mind a couple of times helps, and he ignores the rest.

The Sniper holds the fake cock level with where one ought to be in one hand, running his thumb along it, watching it as his other hand touches the little buzzing toy to the clitoris, the proto-cock.

The Spy runs a hand up one thigh, where the hair starts to grow sparser, where his thumb brushes over a cluster of old injection marks, and he places his other hand over the Sniper's, gaze questioning.

"Please... may I?"

"Only there." The Sniper nods, swallowing back a groan. It slips out, when the Spy applies that buzzing pressure, experimenting with it, touching it to him with only the tip and then holding the length to him, to the underside, to the partially-hooded top, to nudge into the cleft, surrounded by crisp curling hair, before sliding back down to press the toy firmly against the Sniper, and as he does, to take the other toy, the visual stand-in cock, into his mouth.

The Spy is unversed, in female orgasms, in what is real pleasure and what is performance, in what is building upwards and what is the peak-- the firm rubber cock in his mouth gives no indication, though the Sniper's newly-freed hand guides him down on it anyway. He only knows his job is done when he's pushed away with a rough 'no more', and then dragged up into a fierce cuddle and a deep kiss.

"So you... finished, then?"

"Bloody... yes. Finished. Twice."

"Twice?" The Spy grins, perking up. "Is this a record?"

"For that one, yeah. That one's a bit... intense."

"But... not an overall record."

"Gone to three before if I can't fall asleep after going twice." He shrugs. He catches the look on the Spy's face, reminiscent of the determination he always has after losing a fight. "Suppose you're going to do me one better now?"

"Well... maybe?"

"C'mere." The Sniper turns him around, to spoon up behind him, sucking at the side of his neck between bouts of dirty talk and jerking him off. "Mmm... you are a nice one there... fit in my hand just right, don't you? Yeah, know you do... Waiting for me to come take care of you right... You wanna feel something?"

"Feeling something now..." The Spy sighs, leaning back into the Sniper's body, into the arm snaked under him and wrapped around his waist, and the chest against his back.

"Grab that-- give it here, just... take over now." The Sniper guides the Spy's hand into place, setting the speed of his strokes and the range he wants to allow him, before letting the toy buzz against the base of the Spy's cock.

He has no idea what the literal translation is, of any of the words that spill out of the Spy when he does, but he loves the way he jerks and gasps and loses himself.

"Need a hand cleaning up?" He asks, dragging the Spy's hand up to his mouth and licking him clean, chuckling against the skin at the worn-out groan.

"I can see why you like it." The Spy says, after a moment to recover.

"Yeah, well. Not just for girls."

"Clearly not."

"Thanks... for... all this." The Sniper pats his hip, before passing him a cigarette. "Being willing to play around with me."

"I like playing around." The Spy says, his voice still dazed enough that the Sniper can't help another laugh. "What? It's fun."

"Very fun." The Sniper grins, settling down again. "Sometime I'll tell you what I like about those sock garters. Nap now."

"Like naps too." The Spy agrees, letting himself be pulled into another cuddle. He falls asleep in the circle of the other man's arms, something he hasn't done in more years than he cares to remember, feeling absolutely safe with the Sniper's entire body covering his back.


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trust.

They've been meeting about a week with sex added into the bargain, snatching moments of time between fights in the Sniper's nest for a word or a kiss, and then a couple of longer visits in his camper, when the Spy first sees him preparing an injection, something he's been vaguely aware of, having seen the marks, but has never given the weight of his thought to.

"What's this?" He pauses in his dressing, letting his tie slip from his fingers, forgetting his trousers and his one loose sock, twisting around in his seat just below the side of the Sniper's bunk to watch.

"Hormones." The Sniper grunts. He doesn't give any sign of minding the Spy's presence-- aside from the curt answer, he gives no sign of noticing the Spy at all until the whole thing is over. Every movement is deliberate, done in time with his breath, and the Spy has no idea how long the Sniper has undergone this process, or when in that time it became so... ritualized, almost.

He wonders if the Sniper even thinks of it that way, or if it is merely routine to him now.

"S'better than just... y'know." The Sniper shrugs, when it's done and everything has been put away. "Low-level Australium exposure's got... effects, and some of 'em are about the same, but it's damn risky, if you care about keeping your head on straight."

The Spy nods, even though he doesn't know. He knows what Australium is, to the extent that anyone outside the country does. He has never seen any, though he once came close, but he's seen the bikini models with moustaches, and he's heard stories about the technology, and he's heard a few stories from the Sniper that gloss over those things but hint at the culture.

"I figure it's the least weird part of the whole thing." The Sniper chuckles, rolling onto his side to watch the Spy reach for his trousers. "Plenty of different kinds of hormone treatments, for different things, so... mine's just... Mine's just a thing that I take, and as long as I take it my energy's up and I feel better, and I work better, and... Hell, science stuff, I don't know. I'm me either way, but I feel healthier than I used to, or at least more comfortable. Then again, I spent enough time away from the civilized world that I sort of forgot what is and isn't weird."

The Spy laughs. "I'm glad you did, then. I've seen stranger routines, I am sure, just born of vanity." He looks down at the sock he's clipping back into its garter and snorts. "I am one to talk about vanity, hm?"

"I like it. You look like you stepped out of a painting."

The Sniper's voice is quiet-- enough so that the Spy recognizes it as being more than just a line, and of course it doesn't sound like a line the Sniper would use, anyway. He has a hard time imagining the Sniper using lines, when 'want a fuck?' works just fine.

"I am sure I don't." He smiles, looking up over his shoulder.

"The... The thing I like about you." The Sniper is smiling up at the ceiling, cheeks redder than usual. "When I was a-- a kid... Mum took me to the library, every other Saturday. She'd park me in the kids' section a while and then drag me around with her when I was real little, but when I was older she'd leave me there while she ran errands. I was maybe eleven, when I found this book."

The Spy rises, one foot on the seat, to lean on the edge of the bunk, to watch the Sniper speak, the faraway gentleness in his voice, the hesitation in every breath, the sacred quiet descending at the very air of confession around them.

He does not dare interrupt.

"It was all pictures. Paintings, I mean. Stuck in between the big books of Monet and Rembrandt and all them. Not one of the old masters or nothing, just... Men, almost all of it was men. And don't give me any knowing looks, it wasn't dirty. It... It felt a little dirty, to me. It felt like it was mine. I mean, no one really went back there. Hell, library was a tiny building in a tiny town, and the art books took up half the bottom shelf in one back corner. They weren't Aussies. No big moustaches, no denim cutoffs, no bulky men fighting animals-- no fighting anything. I knew I'd never grow up to be one of them, but I didn't want to, I just... I wanted to be a man. A quiet man. I didn't need so much out of life, I still don't. They were beautiful..."

The Spy nods, still unwilling to interrupt, if more was coming. He feels a tug of sympathy for the Sniper's childhood self, the Victoria-who-wasn't, the little lost boy with a secret. He feels a tug of sympathy he hadn't considered for years, for his own eleven year old self, who knew enough of secrets and of double lives, and he's not sure where it came from, that thought of his own past.

"I knew I wasn't going to be one of those men, either. They wore suits, mostly, and used starch, and... and had sock garters." The Sniper laughs, glancing briefly to the Spy. "But... But then there was this one, this one-- and, and then there were more like it, honestly, but this one... These two men in what was so clearly their living room. And not like picking up a roommate, like-- Like they were comfortable putting their feet on the furniture and just sitting about, one of them has the paper, it-- Honestly, it made me think of my parents, except they were both men. Guess no one else caught that... wouldn't have been in the library if anyone but me'd seen it, but I was so desperate for that, you know? It was the last thing I needed. I needed to know that... that liking boys didn't mean I wasn't a man."

"Mon grand..." The Spy slips his hand into the Sniper's, leaning his head against the other man's arm. "I can understand that very well."

"How did you know you liked men?"

"I kissed a boy. And he kissed me back." The Spy smiles. "He wasn't so different from you-- well, he was fifteen, but... But he was a little bit taller than me, and a little bit stronger than me, and he had dark hair that was still lighter than mine, and he didn't like to talk unless it was important. And he looked good in red."

"Oh." The Sniper laughs, turning back to look at the Spy again, meeting his eyes without flinching away. "Cute, then?"

"Handsome. As handsome and as rugged as any fifteen year old boy is, at least. He worked out-of-doors since he was a child, I didn't. We were friends, and then he was my first. I was never very naive, and I never thought he would be my last, or I his..." The Spy pauses, his lip rolling into his mouth to be sucked at and worried between his teeth. "I thought we would be friends our whole lives, who had once had something secret and special, when they were young. In a way I was right."

"I'm sorry."

"We lived dangerously." The Spy shrugs.

"I've gotta--" The Sniper starts, then shakes his head. "It can wait, if you want to stay a bit longer. Or we can drive out to the hotel again and have all Saturday."

"I would like that."

"Go 'round to the cab and I'll be out once I'm decent." The Sniper yanks him close long enough to kiss the side of his head, before letting him go.

The Spy dresses quickly. Outside the camper, he's grateful for the evening air, and the chance to smoke, and to have a moment to himself. He doesn't doubt the Sniper is grateful for the same-- he thinks neither of them is used to that kind of honesty, that kind of sharing. It would have been so much for him just to have seen the box from the cupboard by the head of the Sniper's bunk, with the syringe and the vials and the weird hum that spoke of technology he wasn't supposed to know about keeping those vials safe. Refrigerated? He has no idea if they need to be, or if it was just some sort of high-tech safe. Those aren't the details that interested him then, nor are they the details that interest him now.

He hadn't just seen the syringe, though, or the process, or the fancy box. He'd seen a little piece of the Sniper's history, and given a little piece of his own. He doesn't regret it, as he paces in front of the truck and smokes, but he doesn't understand himself, either, in jumping to give a story of his own in return.

The drive they spend in silence, and he thinks it should be harder than it is, after sharing things, real things. Instead, he watches the Sniper's profile, lit by the sunset, red on the horizon past his window, and he thinks he could learn to share himself, in dribs and drabs, for the chance to learn the man beside him.

He doesn't know how to make 'love' work-- he loses everything he loves, it is safer not to speak of that. 'Like', that is safe enough, and they do like each other. 'Lust' is comfortable, lust has never been as comfortable as it is with the Sniper, whose voice curls deep past the pit of the Spy's stomach, whose hands slide around to cover his body so greedily, who somehow manages to be more of a man than anyone the Spy has fucked around with before even when the Spy has his head down between the Sniper's thighs...

'Trust'...

Trust is something the Spy knows how to broker. Trust is a commodity. Trust has more value than anything that exists in the Spy's world, and he prefers to take, not to give. The Sniper makes him want things to stay equitable.

Maybe that is dangerous, but he likes it so, the thing they have, and he is willing to trade story for story the way he trades touch for touch.


	4. Chapter Three

It's in the motel room, lying in the center of the bed and waiting for the Sniper to get out of the bathroom after what feels like a long time, when the Spy finally thinks to wonder about the Jarate, and when the Sniper emerges, an awkward shifting in his gait, toiletry kit dangling from one hand, he shifts over on the bed.

"How do the jars work?"

"What jars?"

"The jars." He shudders. "Don't ask me to say it."

The Sniper lets out a quick bark of laughter. "Remember when you came 'round Wednesday and asked what was with that... that sort of cut-off top from a plastic jug? And I told you it wasn't important?"

The Spy blanches, and even though it had happened days ago and he'd been wearing gloves, he can't fight the urge to get up and wash his hands.

"You are disgusting! You just leave piss-funnels lying around your home?!"

The Sniper laughs again, rolling over towards the center of the bed, to welcome the Spy back to it with a hard hug. "Maybe you shouldn't poke around in people's stuff, if you didn't want to find things you don't like."

He sleeps in a pair of worn boxers, bought from an army surplus store, faded and soft and khaki-olive, and he doesn't put any shirt back on, out of deference to the Spy, the way he clamors to cuddle up to the silken sprawl of hair. Under the covers, with the Spy's back to warm himself against, it doesn't get cold enough for him to want that layer of insulation.

Wednesday, the Spy had seen his sports bra, thick beige nylon, the opposite of sexual, worn for work or in cold climates... Wednesday he'd been cuddlier, after sex, kept the Spy almost dangerously late.

Like everything else, he reckons, it cycles itself around the shots, a macrocosm of the Spy's own cycle of aloofness and need-- for the Spy, of course, it was still purely physical, purely hormonal, but self-regulated. He wanted space immediately after getting off, and then craved the comfort of touch when enough time had passed. It works for the Sniper, neither of them has to give much to work out a compromise, even when his own needs shift a little.

He's not sure about what the Spy's needs are, beyond what he's met. Handjobs are good, blowjobs are great, and the Spy has been better about figuring out reciprocity than... well, anyone.

He'd had something, before, once... One-sided, but then, at the time, that was what he wanted. A closet case who sometimes got desperate enough to ask, and who wasn't a dick in public, and who wasn't the Sniper's type, and who didn't have much in common with him... Someone he could touch, though, and who he could leave, when he had to. With the Spy now, he's glad to have had the practice sucking cock, at least, even if he's gotten rusty since.

He'd left home to work on a wildlife preserve, trying his best to pass for himself and falling just short, preferring animals to people for company. Shooting poachers hardened him, enough to start taking money to shoot people whose wrongs were more ambiguous. He'd left Oz, for that, traipsed about Europe taking jobs, writing and calling home, and eventually, starting hormone therapy.

He was supposed to go home, then, and had been afraid to, chickened out and stayed in a town three counties away, before finally coming to America. His parents never even knew he'd been in the country, he'd faked long-distance calls and postcards from Spain and Germany... strained to speak in the voice they remembered, and blamed the drop on a smoking habit.

It's harder and harder, to keep up the falsetto and blame the phone lines and cigarettes.

"I have to tell my parents. About me-- not you! About me."

The Spy picks his head up, blinking lazily. "I was going to say. I was unaware we were so serious."

"Just about me."

"... Cher? Mon grand? We can be so serious." His smile is nervous, and the Sniper returns it.

"Thanks. First thing's first, though. Tomorrow I should... Payphone 'cross the street. Motel's phone lines get crossed up, I stayed here before I came to RED one night, tried to call home and got someone else's conversation."

"I didn't know that-- that you stayed here before. I always just picture you... You know. You and your van."

"Wanted to have a shower before meeting the team."

"Mm. All right."

"I don't know what I'm going to tell 'em. I mean... I've been lying a long time."

"I know a thing or two about lying." The Spy nods.

"For tonight... For tonight I've got you, yeah? You've got me?"

"Come here," The Spy murmurs softly, pulling himself up higher on the bed, pulling the Sniper half into his lap, stroking his hair and his back and making no complaint about the crushing hold of the arms locked tight around his knees. "I've got you."

"If it goes bad-- I mean, they're my parents..."

"If it goes badly, then I'll get us something to drink, and bring it to the room, and you can cry to me about it, and we'll drink, and I will talk to you about things that don't matter until you fall asleep. And on Sunday morning it will not matter, what was said or done."

"Thanks."

"If it goes well, I will still buy us drinks-- something more celebratory. And you can fuck me, with whatever you have packed along for the weekend, and I will please you however you ask, until you are done. And on Sunday morning, it still will not matter so greatly, except that we'll have had a wonderful time with each other. You can fuck me in sadness, of course, but let us hope for celebration."

The Sniper laughs weakly, worming in close as he can, the side of his head pressing into the Spy's belly, his own long legs curling up, to tuck every excess inch as close to the Spy as possible.

"Y'ever... y'ever want me like that?"

"Like what, mon beau?"

"With you on top."

"... No."

"You don't have to say it if it's a lie, y'know. 'S all right t'want something."

"I have put too much trust in you." The Spy admits, voice gentle. "For me... For me, fucking a man is fine, but... that's what I do when I am afraid to let myself be taken. When I cannot trust enough to make myself more vulnerable. The way things have happened with us, I do trust you. I am sure I would not mind it, if you asked me to, but what I crave from you..."

"I can't give." He finishes, with a hollow, sad laugh.

"That's not true. You are thinking in acts and in parts. What I want from you is to make myself vulnerable... and also, yes, I enjoy getting fucked. Hard, even. And voici! In that little black case, you have at least one thing to do it with. It's not the same, but it's just as good to me. I would rather have you, a man I am comfortable enough with, a man I want to submit to, than to have a man with working parts in order who I was afraid to open up to."

"... Thanks."

"It's of nothing-- You're welcome." A smile twitches at his lips. It probably is, he realizes, of some importance. The knowledge has been seeping slowly into his conscious mind, ever since they began, that the Sniper has probably never had someone to tell him this. He doesn't know if the man has ever given someone else the chance, but if he has, it clearly didn't end in wedding bells, or... Well, whatever passed for them.

"If it's the same to you, you decide you want to try, it'll be the arse. I mean... at this point, it's gonna take lubrication and stretching either way and I know for damn sure I don't like getting fucked the one way." The Sniper says, his words muffled against the Spy's torso as he shifts again, his face buried in the Spy's undershirt.

"Really? I... always thought those things... You know. Took care of themselves."

He snorts. "Maybe it used to, doesn't now. Fine trade-off for me, reckon, it doesn't do anything else either."

The Spy can't think about this. 'Anything else' is vague and terrible, and he's happy to adopt the Sniper's willingness to just ignore that whole area. Sex with men has not always been fulfilling the way he'd hoped-- he went into every encounter with such hopes, and between his first lover and the Sniper, nothing filled the void, but whatever he did, sex with men was fun, something he did because a man was attractive to him, because it would be fun. Maybe because of a job, but even then, those jobs were the fun kind. Sex with the Sniper is like that, and better than like that, and he enjoys learning his way around the other man's clitoris, the fun of repeat orgasms, and the feeling that he's not just patching over that void, but closing it bit by bit.

He's afraid that he'd lose that, the comforting warm satisfaction that goes soul-deep, if he ever did go in for penetration-- vaginal penetration. Afraid that neither of them would like it, afraid that it would be like other times...

He's not afraid that the Sniper will be changed by it, exactly-- he can't imagine changing the Sniper. After the act as much as before it, he'll be in the bed of a man. For all his talk of things not being about parts, though, he's immensely grateful to be allowed to not worry about that one.

Men he fucks and is fucked by when he wants companionship. When he needs someone. Women, when he needs something. Information, the less-fun seductions. And when he was much, much younger, for food. And he desperately does not want to lose sight of who the Sniper is because of his own problems.

"Why did we start talking about sex?" He sighs.

"'M in your lap, 's all I could think about." The Sniper jokes. There is a spark of truth in it. He thinks however the conversation with his parents goes, he'll turn to the Spy for a good, exhausting round, either in celebration or for comfort.

He's glad to have that talk out of the way, too. The confirmation that the Spy hasn't just been waiting to stick it in, the idea that the Spy does like all the proxies, even if they're not flesh and blood. He doesn't mind familiarizing the other man with the whole of his downstairs, over time-- he's not yet ready to share the full extent of the balancing act it takes to maintain himself, but so far, the Spy has been... good, about dealing with it. He doesn't regret hiding that part of himself from his old booty call-- not even a friend with benefits, but friendly-- and he certainly doesn't regret hiding it from a couple of back-alley flings, but he's glad he let the Spy in. He's not sure how he'd deal with talking to his parents, if he didn't have someone to crawl back to after.


	5. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sniper is not a princess

The first time he calls, his father says 'wrong number' and hangs up. It's a long time before he can make himself dial again, breathe deep as it rings, once, twice, half a ring again.

"Hello?" His mother's voice this time, and he's grateful for that.

His voice comes out strained, and high, but not high enough, not really-- not enough to pass for the voice they knew.

"Mum, it's me. Can-- Can you get Dad on the line as well for this?"

"Vicky? You don't sound well, lamb, are you--"

"Can you get Dad on?" He presses, cracking with the strain of trying to preserve the falsetto long enough to not be hung up on again.

"If you're smoking that much, you should come home, sweetheart. It can't be good for your lungs, and it only takes a week to get a n--"

"Dad." He repeats.

There is a long moment, where he can't hear anything but the faint hum of the line, and he took a knife to the kidneys in a bar fight once outside Darwin and wasn't half as scared of any part of that situation as he is now, of this.

"Your child is on the phone," He hears her call faintly, can imagine her hand cupped over the receiver. "Can you get on the line, dear?"

"Hullo, princess!" His dad's voice is warm-- it wasn't, last time they really talked, the whole mercenary thing still a deep rift between them, but it's been long enough, he thinks, since he's called. Almost nice to think he's been missed.

"Don't," He sighs, forgets to change his voice for their benefit, not that it will matter long, and he freezes, hearing the stillness on the other end.

"... 'toria?" His father, confused.

"Oh dear..." And then, his mother, and he wished he could say he knew it wasn't disappointment in her voice.

"I'm not a princess, Dad, I'm-- I've been-- I'm not--" He stumbles over his words, comfortable in his voice where it is and uncomfortable with their silence, half bewildered, half resigned. "I'm a man. Thought you both should know."

"Well when'd this happen?"

"It didn't happen! You bloody raised me, you ought to know, I-- I never wanted to be... I just am, all right?"

"Don't you use that tone in front of your mother, either, this isn't her fault!"

"It's no one's fault!" He shouts. "But I am, all right?! I'm-- I'm happy like this. I wanted you to be-- I wanted you to be okay with me."

"Over the phone--"

"What was I supposed to do, Dad? Show up on your doorstep and hope for the best? Y'can't kick me out over the phone."

"No... I was never going to-- I just don't get it. Is it that surgery?"

"No, I haven't had any surgery." He sighs.

"Well, how do you know if you haven't?"

"Because I always did know, and I thought you'd get that." He scrubs a hand over his face, skewing his glasses.

"Well... Well what the hell do we call you, then?"

"Vic's fine." He sighs. "Or-- Vic's just fine. And I'd like it if you told people I was your son, but... I mean..."

"Everyone knows we have a daughter."

"Well, you don't, Dad! You have a son-- You-- I mean, don't you?"

The line goes bad a moment, but he can tell there are no words being spoken on the other line, just a weary sigh he knows in his bones.

"So that's what... what people call you, then?" His mother's voice is filled with brittle false cheer, and it stabs at his heart, but it is a far kinder pain than the silence was.

"Not really. No one much calls me anything though, so... Says on my paperwork it's my middle name, 'Victor'."

"Oh."

He winces at the pained note that even the long distance call and the junky payphone can't hide.

"I don't mind Vic, Mum."

"But it's not your name anymore."

"I... I can't explain. It never was."

"I see."

"Mum--"

He hears one receiver click into place and his heart plummets. He doesn't know which of his parents is still on the line, and for another long stretch, no one speaks except the voice urging him to put in another dime.

He does, praying he hasn't missed anything.

"Mum?"

"Sorry, dear. Emergency outside, they had to get your father. Sure it'll turn out fine."

He knows she's lying. His father hung up.

His best ally, throughout his childhood-- the man who'd taught him how to ride a horse and bait a fishhook and shoot a gun, and who'd laughed and ruffled his hair and welcomed him to come along, tromping after in just-too-big boots as his father went about the day's work. His father had been the one to indulge him, to tell his mother that dungarees were far more sensible than the skirts and dresses she would have liked to put him in, the one to say maybe it would be less trouble if they cut his hair short-- that, after he'd knocked three teeth loose from a classmate who'd pulled on his pigtail. He'd even been proud, a little, of that.

That was the man who hung up the phone on him now, the one who'd taught him most of what he knew about being a man to start with.

"He'll come around. I mean, he won't worry so much now!" His mother promises, her voice still brittle and unsure. "That's why he hated your job so much, you know, he never did stop thinking of you as his little princess. He'll see the good parts with a little time."

"Good parts." The Sniper laughs, hollow. Bitter. Which is about the sum of how he feels, in that moment.

"You won't run into trouble with men, this way, I expect."

"No. Expect not."

"Vicky-- Vic. He loves you. That's why it hurts him."

"He's not the one who-- who put himself out on a limb here, Mum. I did."

"I know... I know. I-- I knew."

"When?"

"The last time you called. I just did. I pretended I didn't. You never did... You never were... comfortable. And I realized I did know, really. You could still come home, lamb."

"Got a contract, Mum. It's not dangerous. I can't talk about it, but it's not dangerous this time. When-- When I can, if you like. I'll come visit when I can. Won't be for a while."

"Well, that's-- Maybe that's for the best. You and your father will both have some time, and then things will be better in person. You'll see."

"Yeah. We'll see." He shrugs. "I've got to go."

"Well, take care, sweetheart... Your father and I love you."

"Love you, too, Mum. I'll call when I can."

He hangs up the phone, thinking it will be a long time before he does. He doesn't register the steps he takes, to reach the motel room again, barely registers the world move past him before he's there, and there, amid peeling wallpaper and shabby carpet and scratchy salmon-orange acrylic blankets and despair, there's Spy.

And he realizes he's never been so happy to see someone.


	6. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tears

The Spy doesn't have to ask, when the Sniper lumbers into the room, his feet heavy and his gaze empty. Empty, until their eyes meet, and there's a sudden flaring of life that makes him wonder if this really is something permanent, something he'll live his whole life for, something he would die for...

It's almost like being tackled, when the Sniper throws himself into the Spy's hold, struggling to keep his shoulders from shaking, his whole body heaving in tight little jerks.

"Shh... it's all right." The Spy holds him close, sitting up to curl himself around the man who is back in his lap again, arms around his waist this time. The top of the Sniper's head rests against his sternum, the man bowed over, kneeling between the Spy's legs.

For his part, the Sniper doesn't know how it can be all right. He can feel himself falling to pieces and he doesn't know how long he can hold out.

"Can't." He shakes his head, as far as he can.

"Of course you can."

"Th'others don't... don't-- This-- And I'm not-- won't--"

"If the others don't cry, they haven't half the reason, I expect." The Spy soothes. "I have wept, you know, unabashedly and in public."

"... How old w-were you?"

"Twenty."

"Funeral?"

He nods. "Almost. A little before the funeral."

"No one died."

"Other things, too. A play or a film or a piece of music, if it's good enough, but that is different... that's just a tear or two, not the sort that... But then, I lost most of my reasons to cry when I was young. You'll feel better after, and I promise I do not judge you for it."

"Men just-- just don't, where I'm-- Y'can, can cry once a year and-- already, so-- and no-one's died and-- Just you don't."

"April?"

The Sniper looks up quickly, momentarily startled out of the sobs he's been struggling against.

"Your once-a-year chance to cry. Late April, right?"

"How d'you...?"

"Villers-Bretonneux." He points to himself, smiling a little. "Your countrymen liberated my town, during the first war. 'N'oublions jamais l'Australie'... I grew up with that. It's in all the schoolrooms, there is a memorial outside the town, we celebrate your holiday..."

The Sniper manages a crooked smile. "Oh, I see. You just love me 'cause I'm Australian."

They both freeze for a moment, and the Spy places a hand on the Sniper's cheek.

"I think I love you for a lot of things, mon grand." He whispers.

Then, the tears come, the Sniper curling back into the Spy, and the Spy pulling himself close around. He holds on through the shaking sobs, and when every breath the Sniper draws in sounds thick with mucus, he stretches away to retrieve his handkerchief without hesitation, rubbing the Sniper's back in broad circles.

"Crying's exhausting." The Sniper croaks, when the last of the sobbing peters out. "Think I'll stick to once a year."

"All right." The Spy laughs, and it is a weak and confused sound, but then the Sniper joins him, the two of them rearranging themselves on the bed, clinging to each other until yet another reason to shake has worn itself out.

"I'm not disowned." He sighs.

"Good." The Spy kisses his temple.

"Dad hung up-- twice, really. Mum says he'll come 'round, and I don't know, but... I mean... I just wanted to be able to talk to them, in my voice. And I wanted him to stop calling me 'princess', and I don't think that's too much to ask."

"Princess?" The Spy snorts. "You? You were never!"

"Well..." The Sniper smiles in spite of himself. "Used to follow him all around. I just... I was little enough to think he was what I'd grow up to be."

"You look just like him, you know, in that photograph."

"Yeah." His smile settles into something less embarrassed, less nervous. "Reckon so. Hey... When this is all over, you should... you should take me back with you."

"To France? I would insist upon it, cher. To Villers-Bretonneux? It has been so many years since I have been there myself. But if you will come with me, I will go back."

"I will. Would-- Would you come with me, as well? Just to see-- Well... dunno if sheep interest you much, but out west a bit's Clare Valley if you wanted to... to look at wine or something. I mean, if you were interested-- Well, and Kooringa's only got a thousand people who live there, and we weren't in the town proper even, but... You could fly with me, and do some touristy things or stay in Adelaide, while I... when I do try to fix things with my parents."

"I would enjoy looking at wine. I might even enjoy looking at sheep, if you think it will not scandalize your parents too deeply to meet me."

"Hard to know what'll scandalize 'em. I mean... Hell, if I was who they wanted me to be, they'd roll out the welcome wagon for a well-to-do frenchman. Now I don't even know how welcome I really am... Well, war's on for now. Be a while before I need to worry about that."

"Right. Of course." The Spy chuckles, drawing the Sniper in for a kiss. "I will go where you need me to be, when the time comes, and until then... until then, I can pour you a drink, I have a bottle over in the ice bucket. And we'll have the rest of today to forget about the war as well."

"Sounds good." The Sniper melts into the mattress, content to wait for the Spy to prop him up and pour something alcoholic into him. As much as he would hate to make a habit of it, letting himself cry just the once did bring with it some catharsis. And there was something... there was something about knowing that before they'd ever met, the Spy had been more than dimly aware of Australia, not as a secretive island continent of madmen and wild animals, but as... well, at the very least, something friendly.


	7. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Spy is available for comforting duties.

It's a while after the crying jag and the drinks, before the Sniper feels up to anything resembling sexual intimacy, but the other kind, the sweet wordless thing that they'd lapsed into in each others' arms, he doesn't regret that. He doesn't regret any of the words they did say, embarrassing as they were.

He nuzzles into the Spy's chest, slipping a hand into his shorts.

"Well well well..." The Spy leers, and the Sniper feels ready to purr at the touch of fingers running lightly over his scalp. "Feeling better, I see."

"Getting there. Could use some cheering up, if you're available."

"I am available."

He rolls back, loose-limbed on the bed, to let himself be stripped and petted at, meeting the Sniper's mouth with a warm willingness that none of his past sexual partners ever had-- not even the girl had been so glad to kiss him as the Spy is.

The Spy moans, as the Sniper's lips slip away from his and trail down the divide of his body, from the dip of his clavicle down the sternum to his navel and down, down, down even further than he'd anticipated, to mouth at his balls.

He rolls with it, his hips moving as far as the broad, strong hands on them allow, his voice enough for the Sniper to hear even as he struggles to keep it from passing through the motel's too-thin walls.

"Turn around," He gasps, pawing at the Sniper's shoulder, urging him to swing around, until he's balanced awkwardly with his knees on the pillows, to either side of the Spy's head, feet hooked up over the headboard, legs sliding out a little as he tries to lower himself just enough, the Spy's hands on his thighs to help guide him.

The Sniper thinks it would be easier the other way around, but they've already done so much work to get into position that he doesn't undo it, just works through the ridiculous feeling until they fit.

They're both a little surprised not to mind it, awkwardness and all, with the Spy's nose nudging into the deep pink folds of labia that they'd both previously ignored as he does the best job he can of sucking at the Sniper's clitoris-- basically, he reminds himself, a small near-cock, and the reactions he gets are worth it, when he works it with tongue and lips and just a little touch of teeth.

They muffle each other, which helps, and the Sniper swallows, and keeps swallowing, as the Spy's hips buck up against his hands, as they both come. He keeps riding the Spy's face, even after his own climax breaks and subsides, as the Spy takes him through a second.

He rolls off him, turning back around, after that. There's a little urge to go for more, but he reckons the Spy could use a break, and he winds up lighting both cigarettes, the two of them lying with a space between until the last of the smoke curls up to the ceiling, and the Sniper drops both ends into the ashtray on his nightstand, before welcoming the Spy back into his arms.

"Needed that." He grants him a quick kiss, and then a longer one.

"Mm. I am hardly complaining."

"You, erm, do a good job, with that."

"What can I say? You inspire me." He smiles up at the Sniper, puckish and still so wanton...

"Tomorrow... tomorrow remind me I brought something for you. Today's been a bit about me, and I appreciate that. Which, ah, is why... y'know. I brought something for you." He yawns. "Remind me about it in the morning. Think you will like it."

"I cannot wait." The Spy smiles, fumbling for the edge of the covers. "I think things will look better then..."

"Yeah, think so." He helps to tug the covers over them both. There's still a lingering hurt, if he thinks about the phone call too much, and there's still a little nervousness, about what he does have planned, but mostly... Mostly, he is content enough to get some sleep, with the Spy tucked up close.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A date, of sorts, and a compromise reached to please both parties.

They both wake up in the wee small hours of the morning with the realization of hunger, the too-long time since they'd eaten anything real, and the Spy is loath to put on clothes when he'd been promised something special, but he takes his separate turn in the shower and dresses anyway, to accompany the Sniper to breakfast.

The diner is like a big tin loaf up on blocks, a little trellis surrounding its less-than-permanent foundations, and it is painfully American, the Spy thinks, but it is also empty, and the waitress doesn't blink an eye at a pair of men rolling into a booth, clothes rumpled and dusty. She merely takes them for a trucker and a traveling salesman falling into company after miles of solitude, and pours coffee without so much as asking if they want it. She's never had a patron who said no.

They talk little-- too ravenous, and in too public a place, for that. The Sniper orders the largest breakfast on the menu, the Spy aims for moderation, and that does not seem to surprise the waitress either. The meals appear before them quick enough, as do the separate checks.

The Spy has regrets, at the texture of the cottage cheese and the age of the fruit, but the eggs are still better than the stuff he normally sees on-base, if not so good as fresh and homemade, and eating them on his toast covers the taste of the oleo some.

He refuses the meat, though the Sniper offers him one of his sausage links. No way of knowing what's in it, without asking, and even asking is a long shot. The Sniper wolfs them down, and his own eggs, and a stack of pancakes the Spy thinks must sit like cement on the stomach.

When they're back in the motel room, talk comes easier, between kisses and touches.

"What did you bring for me?" The Spy asks, pushing the Sniper's shirt open.

"Well... y'mentioned the-- the toys, and that I could... fuck you with one, yeah?"

"I would enjoy that."

"I brought two." He reaches into the small bag. One the Spy is already familiar with, having fellated it before. The other is a good bit bigger. "Um... I... I experimented with a couple... sizes. When I was looking at... at... y'know. Getting a good visual substitute, something that fits the hand right. That one was bigger'n I decided I liked, but..."

"You like this one?" The Spy gives it a stroke, before turning his attention on the big one, eyes wide, tongue flicking out across his lips. "We could make a compromise we'll both like, I think..."

"Yeah?" The Sniper gives him a little leer, nervousness evaporating again.

"This one is yours." He holds up the smaller one. "And any time that you like, I will go down on my knees and suck it while I get you off."

"Like that idea."

"And then this one..." He presses the big one into the Sniper's hand. "This one you just use to fuck me."

There is a flash of a mental image, the Spy on his knees in front of him, one arm reaching back so that he could fuck himself with the toy, the other hand up beside the Sniper's own, swallowing the substitute cock as he works them both...

"I like that plan." He agrees, getting the Spy's trousers down before returning to the kit for the little single-use packet of petroleum jelly, from that gift-that-keeps-giving of the Medic's supply cupboard.

He positions the Spy on knees and elbows in the center of the bed, once he gets him stripped, and starts carefully stretching him open, pushing the lubricant up into him.

"Oh... oh, cher, how did you get so good at this?" The Spy moans, rolling his head back, dropping it forward, his hips bucking to meet the Sniper's hand.

"Believe me, now is not the time." He kisses the Spy's back. "It's not a sexy story. Yeah, nah, don't want to spoil this, you're far too sexy a thing to spoil with something like that..."

He takes more time with the Spy than he's ever liked to take on himself. The difference, he reckons, is that Spy enjoys having a couple of slick fingers pushing around inside him, and the Spy is a pleasure to explore, whereas for him, a certain amount of similar treatment has long been necessity and not fun.

The Spy bites down on a pillow, when he finally starts working the toy into him, but the low moan isn't fully muffled, and the clear enjoyment he takes in it goes straight between the Sniper's legs.

He whispers, things he doesn't even keep track of himself, as he slides it in and out, gives it a little half-twist every here and there. Sweet things, he's never picked up a skill for dirty ones, and half of them are smothered against the back of one thigh, his lips pressing and sliding against the sweat and the sparse dark hairs.

It's intimacy on a whole new level, to have this vantage point, to watch the muscles quiver, to watch the Spy's cock bob, his balls draw up tight, to watch the way his body clenches around the hard rubber cock as he comes hard across the bedsheets.

He presses a warm, long kiss to one cheek, as he slides the toy out of the other man, easing him down to lie on his side.

"You're pretty incredible." The Spy mumbles, as the Sniper moves to sit, cross-legged, on the bed beside him. His hand comes up to rest on one of the Sniper's knees, and his smile is lazy as he lets that hand drift up the Sniper's thigh, until he has the other man's clit between two fingers, tugging slow and gentle with occasional brushes of his thumb, with his knuckles softly meeting the cleft, the mons, with every flex and pull of his hand.

"Mm, yeah, you too..." He leans back against the headboard, shifting to make it easier for the Spy to play with him.

The Spy raises himself up on his other elbow, nuzzling at the Sniper's ribcage, then higher, his nose tracing the natural line of the pectoral muscle instead of outlining the breast tissue.

It was a little thing, almost absurd to notice, with the hand still working its magic, but the Sniper found he was still grateful for it.

"Nipples." The Spy says, his words still half-smothered on skin. "Yay or nay?"

"Yay." The Sniper sighs, guiding the man's head up. "Just don't jiggle the... the soft bits, and anything you wanna do with the whole damn body's fine by me..."

The Spy takes the permission and runs with it, tugging the one he can reach into his mouth, his tongue playing at it, swirling around and flicking across the tip, surprised at the depth of reaction he gets, at how quickly he's gently pushed away again, the Sniper grunting out a sigh and sliding down to lie on his back.

"We should have more weekends like this." He grins, passing the Spy a cigarette from his own crumpled carton. "Without the disastrous part, I mean."

"I could not agree with you more." The Spy cuddles up to him, better recovered from his own orgasm, and the Sniper allows it, even though he's not sure he feels ready to return it.

Still, even with the Spy wrapped around his waist, he can breathe. He lets his fingers play through the man's hair, sucking a moment on his own unlit cigarette.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Spy has his own secrets to entrust.

"You have to think of it like a balancing act-- or a juggling act. Or an act where you juggle knives while balancing on a unicycle." The Sniper explains, when Spy's Tuesday night visit and subsequent rummage-through-personal-effects turns up the topical estrogen.

"All right. So you are juggling knives on a unicycle. That sounds dire."

"Clubs, then. Less dire for you? The shots... the shots do a lot, and I'm glad for 'em, but... Look, can we just accept that I don't want to talk about my vagina and you don't want to hear about it?"

"If you really don't want to talk, of course." The Spy shrugs, slouching into a seat at the Sniper's table. "I am merely at your disposal. I don't... I don't want you to think I am... am disgusted, by any of you, just because I am not much into... well, that."

"You can be disgusted if you like, I've been well put off by it most my life. I mostly get along fine with it now... but I get being disgusted by it. I went through puberty with the damn thing."

The Spy chuckles, shaking his head. "I don't like women, though, and I have never mistaken you for one, regardless of your... condition, or... I mean, however you want to call it. I admit when it comes to sex, it is a little hard for me to separate the two... I told you I was almost pretty once, didn't I?"

The Sniper nods.

"There were not very many men-- The elderly, yes, and boys. And me, only just at the age of consent, and starving. And her, a widow, and as well-to-do as anyone was, in that town. Not far from our own, we were on the road then-- my friend and I. The war was over, but that didn't fix things... And I learned that even in the hands of an experienced woman of an attractive enough age, it was not for me."

He'd never called it 'prostitution'-- women, after all, didn't buy prostitutes anyway. Women just fed skinny boys with fine features. It wasn't as though he had told her he liked boys, either, she asked him in, and asked him in, and he'd said yes, yes to a house that smelled like fresh-baked bread, and yes to a woman who had stories of a dead husband who had once looked almost like the Spy, if she squinted. He hadn't known, that he would find it repulsive, until it was happening. But she had been lonely, and he had left her house with enough food for two in his coat.

He doesn't go into the details, and the Sniper reads enough in his face not to ask them. Suffice to say he didn't care for the experience, and the Sniper had had his own bad times with a woman.

If he wasn't wrong about the thought that this might be love, then he thought he might someday share that story, too. It's hardly the biggest thing on his mind, anyway.

"Are you... I mean, if this is a real thing with us, are you okay, with the fact that I haven't got... y'know, an... organic cock?"

The Spy snorts, slapping the table. "An organic cock! Such a descriptor!"

"Well are you?"

"Mon beau, the situation is hardly ideal for either of us, but there is no reasonable way of helping it, is there?"

The Sniper says nothing, even as the Spy stands to slip arms around his waist and lean into him.

"Oh, cher, don't be gloomy. Our weeknights are too short for this sadness now. Sunday evening I watched you shave with the same knife you used to skewer me with, if you are not man enough for me with things like that, who is?"

"You'd be happier if I had one."

"I won't lie to you." The Spy sighs, stroking the Sniper's stomach, forehead butting up between his shoulderblades. "It would make me happy to feel your hips thrusting into me instead of just your hand. It would make me happy to feel you in the back of my throat and taste sweat and skin instead of plastic. Of course it would. That does not make me... unhappy, with you as you are. It only means I have preferences, like any man might. Surely there are ways you would improve me!"

"Physically? Nah. Well... Yeah, nah. You look pretty right to me."

"Other than physically?"

"You could stop rummaging around my stuff every time you come to visit."

"Oh, mon grand, what are the chances of that happening?" He laughs, giving the Sniper a squeeze. "Besides... I cannot want it any more than you do yourself, right?"

"Dunno. Haven't much thought about it, not in a long time. Like I said, most times I'm all right with my body. Used to being the only one who sees it."

"Oh." The Spy doesn't let go, though he wonders if he should, if his presence is somehow damaging to the 'til-him-so-unsexed man before him, if he calls things into doubt that were long since accepted, just by virtue of his observing them. Schrodinger's Cock, a thought he would laugh at if he could bring himself to. It is ridiculous enough, but he feels the weight of it too keenly.

"I don't mean you." The Sniper says quickly, when the time and stillness have let him guess closely enough at the Spy's train of thought. "We're good. I mean, I'm good with you."

"And I with you." The Spy promises. No matter how fervently he means it, his voice sounds hollow in his ears, and he holds on tight a moment more to make up for it, and wishes the Sniper had never asked about what could make him happier.


	10. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy discovers the joys of a boyfriend with a box of cocks. Sniper talks to Medic.

"Bought this back when I still thought I might like that kind of thing. Turns out I didn't." He pulls a condom over the thing, slicks both it and the Spy up, and it's small and smooth and slender, like a model rocket with the fins pulled off, and even the chrome hadn't shone the way this thing does, super-shiny and rather too pink.

It has the same little button, at the base of it, the same little outline of Australia that lights up under the Sniper's touch, only after he's worked it in and out of the Spy like he did with the regular dildo, and the Spy's whole body reacts.

He loves that. Even if it isn't sex by the standards of anyone else he's ever met-- and if it is, of course, the Sniper would have no way of knowing that-- he's happy to expend the effort and the creativity to be the one making the Spy arch off the bed, to make his toes flex and tense. He'd always thought toes were supposed to curl in, over something like this, the Spy's spread out and pull back. His hands, now those pull in, gripping the bedsheets hard, pulling until the Sniper wouldn't be too surprised if the Spy tore the sheets one of these days.

He likes being free to move, to watch every part of the Spy up close, the bobbing of his throat, the way his mouth works soundlessly and his eyelids barely flutter, and the twitch and tremble of muscles-- the belly and thighs, both prime targets for that little movement, and then, the clenching of those muscles, where he pushed and pulled and twisted the vibrating cylinder. And, he likes wrapping a hand around the Spy's cock, to work him through his first orgasm.

The Sniper doesn't call it payback, when he works the Spy through two more of them, just buzzing at his prostate and stroking and kissing at the rest of him, letting the softening cock rest and stay out of the proceedings.

He does have mercy after the third, the Spy is just so boneless... and there's not going to be any reciprocity, he can tell, he needs it before the Spy is going to be ready to give it. He settles next to him on the bed and tosses the well-lubricated condom into the trash, using the same toy for himself, just externally, for the vibration. It's enough to get him off, and when he sets it aside after and looks back at the Spy, the other man's eyes have finally opened, a look of sheer adoration in them.

"Fun, yeah?"

"Incroyable."

"Make up for me... not having...?"

There's a long pause-- he's not sure whether or not to worry about it, or if the Spy is just rebooting himself. It doesn't help him any, that when the Spy opens his eyes, the look in them is serious.

"Cher. Before you, every man I slept with has had one cock."

"Well, yeah--"

"You have a box full of them, and they do interesting things. Yes, it... Yes. Good. Fun." He slings an arm over the Sniper's waist, pulling himself in close. "Light me up a cigarette, mon grand? We can see the museum next weekend, I am not leaving this bed today. I don't know if I can."

He laughs, and obliges, lighting the Spy's cigarette, and then his own off the glowing tip.

"And the stamina!" The Spy adds, after a long drag. "With the... organic cock, you know, I am lucky if I can get off first like that, it takes a helping hand, and forget about any man staying hard long enough to bring me off twice more-- then again, the vibrating helps, at that..."

"Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it, you're happy with the toys."

"I am happy with you. But, you come with quite the arsenal. And if you didn't, you would still have very nice hands." He sighed. "I don't have... doubts, of you, you know. You know that."

"I know. Seems a bit too good to be true, yeah."

"It's true. I have had men-- and quickly tired of them!-- who carried their manhood around in their cock. And for an hour perhaps it is nice, to be with someone who has something to work with and who knows how to work with it. But that is all they are... and without that, just... nothing. You know? You carry your manhood in all of yourself. It is far more attractive, when it comes to actually spending time with a person."

"I'm glad to hear it." He snorted. He gave the Spy a squeeze anyway, the teasing tone covering up genuine emotion as best he could manage, trying to defuse the moment before honesty had the chance to overwhelm him. "I... Tomorrow, I need to get back to base earlier than last week. Is that okay? If I don't make you get out of bed today?"

"But of course. Team meeting?"

"Not as such. Just a little... scheduled talk, with the doc. Put him off long enough, but I figure... if I get in right before dinner, I might get out without any unnecessary needles."

The Spy laughed. "Ah, that's right. Yours is worse than ours when it comes to that, isn't he?"

"Bit mad, yeah."

"Mm. Well, I can come see you again on Tuesday maybe?"

"Tuesday's when I-- Yeah. You can come by anytime."

The rest of the weekend goes by faster than either of them would like, if pleasurably. The Spy's assurance, and the memory of those adoring looks, is what gets him through the drive back to the base-- what gets him into the base, and into the infirmary.

Not right away, of course. There's a lingering goodbye, before the Spy sneaks back to his own base, and then there's a good block of time that the Sniper spends giving himself a pep talk, giving himself every inch of metaphorical armor he possesses, before he walks into the room and interrupts the Medic at his report-writing.

"Doc."

"Ah, Sniper. What can I do for you?"

"The, ah... the company physical." He nods, looking away, fighting just to get the words out.

"Herr Sniper, every time that I have attempted to give you your company-mandated physical, you have found your way right out of it. The first time, you threatened to bite me! And with those teeth!"

"So I'm exempt for life?"

"On the contrary, you are far overdue. I just wondered what changed your mind." He adjusts his glasses, trying to sidle past the Sniper.

"I'm not gonna do a runner, Doc, you don't have to bar the door."

"Of course not." The Medic laughs, a little too high and nervous. "No, of course not! I am merely locking it for your comfort as the patient. I would never dream of barring you into the infirmary!"

"Long as you can tell the company I'm healthy, this is all privileged information, right?"

"Of course. I've been lying on your reports for as long as we have been working together, anyway, why start telling them the whole truth now?" He rolls his eyes. "So, what is it? Do you make every doctor you go to fight next to you for a couple of years before you trust him to examine you? It's not-- You do not think there is a problem, do you?"

"N--no. Not... I mean, I wouldn't call it a 'problem', but it's... I mean, yeah, weird to explain, but, well, you..."

"It's not blood tests, you finally gave in on that... it's certainly not providing urine samples, not that they are any good to me with those damnable pills you take... If you're nervous about the prostate exam--"

"No need to be nervous about it, it's not gonna happen." The Sniper says with a snort, pulling his work shirt off, not yet ready to strip out of the two undershirts. He fumbles with his belt a little, hesitant.

"Your health--"

"Just... Hold off, all right? I can promise you it's not an issue."

"All right, well, undress behind the screen, grab a little paper robe, and I will be the judge of what is and isn't an issue. May I remind you, only one of us has gone to medical school."

"Yeah, yeah."

The screen makes it easier. He can wrap the little robe around himself before his chest is exposed-- it's only paper, after all, no reason the Medic couldn't listen to his heart and lungs right through it... He keeps his briefs on under, and sits up on the table to let his eyes, ears, and throat be looked at, and when the stethoscope comes out and he makes no move to open the robe, the Medic merely sighs and works through it.

"All right, turn your head and cough." He orders, with a brisk false cheer, dropping the stethoscope to lie against his chest and reaching under the hem of the paper garment.

The Sniper freezes, his mind running through every swear he knows and then inventing new ones when they prove insufficient.

"... Herr Sniper?"

"Yes?" He asks.

"Is it... possible... that your genitals... are not attached to your body?" The Medic's voice goes high again, his words coming out at a crawl as he tries to pick them carefully.

The Sniper pushes the bottom of the robe open, and pulls the soft rubber facsimile out of his briefs, tossing it to the Medic. His face is burning, and the last thing he expects is for the delighted note to the Medic's laughter.

"Oh! Oh, I knew a girl once who had one of these..."

"What?" The Sniper growls.

"Oh, yes, yes, she was... This was years ago! She was a male impersonator, in a nightclub. She used to take it out at the end of the night and throw it at people, and everyone would laugh, and once a man tried to keep it!"

"Yeah, well I'm not a girl." He snaps, grabbing it back.

"I see. But... This is why? The reason you have fought any medical care outside of combat?"

"Yeah."

"How much did you lose?"

For a long time, he doesn't understand the question, and when he does, he's oddly proud.

"Didn't. I've got the other thing. Still not a girl."

"Very well." The Medic nods. "I'm... not an expert, on the other thing, but--"

"I've got another doctor for that." The Sniper says quickly. He decides against mentioning that this other doctor is in Europe, and hasn't been seen in years. "Just... here for the general look-over. I thought... I thought if I told you, you'd stop trying to--"

"Right, yes, of course." He nods, picking up the Sniper's chart. "I will just say that the examination went as normal, and you are in perfect health, shall I?"

"Thanks, Doc. It... it means a lot. If the team knew about this, I mean if anyone did... I'd lose my job just to start."

"Believe me, Herr Sniper, I know something about losing your job because of someone else's prejudices. Where did you buy that, by the way?"

"Think I found it in a shop in Germany, actually."

"They didn't use to make them that well." He nods, as if he were merely talking about shoes or automobiles or electric razors. "Of course, for a while they stopped selling anything like that, but... Well. I will see you at dinner."

"Yeah. Thanks again, Doc."

He dresses quickly and staggers out, and he is late to dinner, with the time it takes to decompress, but he's glad he did it.


	11. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... And Spy drops in to offer some comfort, in his own fashion.

In spite of the visit with Medic going as well as possible, he spends the rest of Sunday night on edge. It takes time, to purge himself of all the worst-case scenarios that never came to pass, the visions of needing to knock the other man out and drive off the base before he could come to and tell the team, the questions of how he'd get back to the Spy if that had happened.

And instead... instead, he'd asked 'how much did you lose?', had first assumed that the substitute was part of the aftermath of some genital mangling, that he'd been born with it. And even on being corrected, he'd been...

Well, good about it, certainly. Weirdly enthusiastic, but it wasn't as if he'd asked to have a look just to satisfy any intellectual curiosity. It's worth being mistaken for the kind of person who belonged in weird nightclubs, maybe, if it means the Medic will stay quiet about things. He hopes so. He doesn't really want to ask, about what these nightclubs were like, he doesn't even care for bars, except that it's easy to buy drinks there sometimes, and the music isn't always crap.

When he tries to imagine it, he realizes he's probably picturing something from a film, and he doesn't want to amend that mental image by finding out if the reality of it was tamer or wilder. Mostly, he imagines Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo, but throwing rubber cocks at people who laughed and shouted things in German.

It gives him a headache. Not that he isn't grateful, but he is tired... he'd put all his energy into mustering up the courage to take that risk, and even having it pay off is exhausting. His brain is still screaming fight-or-flight at him as he lies in bed, and it's a long time before sleep claims him.

It makes Monday hell, even though the day starts normally. Medic greets him with nothing that couldn't be mistaken for an ordinary morning of battle-ready enthusiasm, nobody else stares, but he still has an itchy trigger finger, and he misses too many shots, feels too jittery.

There's a too-brief visit from the Spy, in his nest, that only hammers home how everything seems too too much of everything, and they stage a fight just to be able to hold onto each other, even if it means knives sinking into backs, blood bubbling up to his lips as he coughs at it, and his lips against the Spy's ear, and the round is over by the time he respawns, and Monday night is a lonely one.

Tuesday night, the Spy is there, and he crushes him into a non-lethal embrace at last, as if it's been an eternity instead of two days since he'd had the man in his bed.

"Easy, tiger..." The Spy chuckles, nuzzling at his jaw with a soft little noise. "I do have you."

"I told the doc."

The Spy is still for a long time, his hands bunching at the back of the Sniper's shirt, his breath coming out in hard little snuffs, before he can ask anything.

"And?"

"And I guess he's some kind of freak himself, dunno. He didn't flip out on me, why aren't I... happier, about that?"

"I don't know."

"No, yeah, I'm happy. I am. Of course. Relieved. Just still nervous. I've... Not a lot of people before you have known. People either knew me as Victoria or they knew me as me, but no one knew... you know. Found one doc, through some very discreet inquiry, who handled this stuff, but when I was growing up if I even tried to talk to anyone-- I'm not used to telling people, that's all."

"How many people did you talk to? Before."

"I didn't tell anyone. I mean, when I was a real little thing, I'd say I was gonna grow up to be like my old man, I guess, but then, you know, they just... Folks smile and pat your head and say you're daddy's little girl. The rest... You know, my parents, or the family doctor, would say... 'That's how everyone feels about growing up'. They didn't get I was growing up wrong. They thought I just wanted to stay a kid. Or they'd tell me what I meant to say, like I didn't know. I learned to shut up about everything pretty quick..."

The Spy nods, rubbing his back. "I know something of being different things for different people, of hiding myself... I don't know what it is like to be you, but I do know what it is like to be half one thing and half another, and to be-- to be... conflicted. Some days I still am, by things I only half remember. Mostly, like you, I think, I learned to get by. I kept what I knew I was in a little box where the world could not touch me, and I wore a different mask for everyone. It works. If it is healthy, I do not know."

"What are you half of?" The Sniper smiles faintly, leaning back to look at him.

"Take your pick. Half Catholic, half Jew. And half of both families disowned us long before I was ever born, and only started to make up when the war was on our doorsteps and we had better people to hate than our fellow countrymen."

"Ah."

"Ah indeed. I don't know how common such unions are now, but when my parents fell in love, apparently it was unheard of. That was how they always told it. Anyway, I know it is hardly similar, but it is the best I can offer of myself. You share your secrets, I... I am unused to doing the same, and damn you, but you make me want to. You could have quite a career just in making me talk, I can name a few men who would pay you a lot of money."

"Wouldn't want their money."

"And that is why I can talk to you."

"Besides, they don't care about your religion-- er, religions."

"No. Nor my parents. But I would rather tell you about myself, than bore you with old state secrets or the workings of underground organizations."

"Dunno. If you want to stick around, I wouldn't mind a good story about you and some state secrets. I just gotta... do that thing."

"All right." The Spy slips out of his own clothes, working around the Sniper as they both undress, the Sniper's clothes going into a tucked-away hamper, the Spy's hanging up neatly on a hanger he'd reserved himself.

He leans against the bunk, watching with a sort of fascinated disgust, as the Sniper works at getting the estrogen cream applied.

"You don't have to look, you know."

"I can't seem to stop..."

"Fuck's sake, Spook..." He sighs, rolling his eyes as he towels his hand off.

The Spy shrugs, mouthing a quick apology, before sliding into the bed, turning onto his side to have the Sniper spooned up behind him.

"As long as I get back before dawn, I am free to stay... How about you relax, and I will tell you about what happened to me in Liechtenstein?"

"Good story?"

"Twenty men chased me through Triesenberg. So it is a pretty good story."

"All right. Take my mind off things. Tell me about Liechtenstein."


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A date turns awkward.

Friday night they make their usual trip into the town, and Saturday morning the Spy lets the Sniper guide him through the museum.

There is a little recreation of a miner's shack, in one corner of the dusty old building, which the Spy raises an eyebrow over.

"Charming."

"Well, it was home. Theoretically, leastways. Hell, I could live in one."

"You live in a van, though."

"You don't complain about my van when you're sneaking out to get away from your roommates." He chuckles. "C'mon, the outside exhibits are what we came to see, anyway."

The Spy shrugs and follows, past a few rust-covered relics, as the Sniper went over the names of them.

"There's the steam engine, with the flywheel pulley. And this is part of a stamp mill, big one. Ah! There's a Chilean Mill and that's the Jaw Crusher."

"Very charming."

"There's the sluice over here, c'mon around the corner-- Now, this isn't near as impressive as that one in pieces would be, this is the small stamp mill, see, there's the cam shafts and the Bull Wheel."

"This is the small stamp mill?"

The Sniper's face splits into a grin. "Big one's around the corner."

The Spy follows again, around the side of the building, and comes to a stop in front of a truly gigantic piece of machinery.

"Course, when you're mining for metals, it's for crushing ore. This one was part of the gravel rush, it's just for busting up rock. They had stuff like this lying around when I was a kid, used to get in trouble for climbing on the big pieces-- that was back before they had it all in museums and tourist traps, mind."

The Spy laughs. He can imagine the Sniper as a skinny child, shimmying up some big metal carcass of an old copper mining machine, before the couple from his photograph came shouting after him...

The Sniper looks around quickly, mischievous intent clear on his face. "Hey, no one's around, yeah?"

"You must be joking."

"Dare me?" He grins.

"You know, you don't need to impress me, I do plan on going to bed with you." The Spy folds his arms and tries to get across just how unimpressed he is.

He's a little impressed, in spite of himself, when the Sniper makes it to the top of the monstrosity.

He is less impressed, when on the way back down he hears a sharp hissed curse and runs around to the other side to find the Sniper cradling his hand up against his body.

"That's what this weekend needed, tetanus." The Spy groans.

"Yeah, yeah, you told me so. Relax. 'S not tetanus, just twisted my wrist up."

"Oh? I see." The Spy leans in, peeling the Sniper's other hand back from where he's shielding himself so that he can inspect the damage. "All of this blood came from when you didn't cut yourself on hundred-year-old metal, then."

"It did, actually. Ripped one hell of a splinter out before you got over."

He taps the ground next to it with his boot, and the Spy feels ill. The most gruesome deaths, he faces with elan, but a splinter that size, and the Sniper's blood over something so mundane and so stupid...

"Do you need to get your wrist looked at, or--?"

"Medic can, when we get back tomorrow. Doc in town hasn't got half what he does, anyway. Have to go into the city for an x-ray and I'm not going into the city. Besides, 's not broke, just twisted. There's a first aid kit in th--"

"I know where it is." The Spy goes on ahead, moving quickly.

"Course you do!" The Sniper calls after him, as he ambles along in his wake. "Spend enough time digging through my stuff!"

Still, he's glad for it, sitting at his breakfast table with the Spy carefully fussing over him. The last remains of the splinter are tweezed away under intense scrutiny, the wound cleaned and sanitized, and after his hand is bandaged, the Spy wraps his whole wrist to keep it still until the Medic can look at it.

"Just in case." He shrugs.

"Sure. Thanks."

The Spy rolls his eyes, but he presents his cheek to be kissed. The Sniper is more worried about letting the Spy drive than he ever was about any part of his hurting himself, but they get to the Sugar Pine in one piece.

He feels like demolishing something by the time they get there, and settles on a tuna melt. It's a decision he feels was the right one, once it arrives, and he pretends not to notice when the Spy steals fries off of his plate. The indignation when he repays himself by stealing some of the other man's potato salad is amusing enough to distract him from the pain in his wrist and hand.

"Like you weren't going to give it to me." He grins, reaching across the table and snatching away the pickle spear from the Spy's plate.

That, he is more than happy to give up. He doesn't even feign injury at the loss. He merely pushes his glass of ice water and an aspirin across the table and waits for the Sniper to give in and take it.

"I'd be fine. Don't know why I even keep that stuff on hand anymore."

"In case something like this happens when you don't have the Medic on call. Humor me?"

The Sniper shakes his head and swallows the pill. He refuses to admit that it helps, even though by the time they're back in the hotel room with the TV on, he can feel a definite improvement.

"Fuck." He groans, when Adam-12 ends and the credits for Get Smart start up.

"Agreed. Do you want the last half of Jackie Gleason, or the Newlywed Game?"

"No, no, time is it?"

"Eight." Spy rolls out of bed to change the channel anyway. "Jackie Gleason does not come in, unless Jackie Gleason is green. Newlyweds it is."

"Fucking hand's a mess, wrist won't move, fuck."

The realization dawns on the Spy after a moment and he squares his shoulders. "Do you need help with... that thing?"

"Gee, thanks."

"That thing you do, I don't mean-- I wasn't calling it 'that thing', I mean--"

The Sniper laughs, beckoning the Spy over and tugging him into a kiss. "I'm teasing. And I'll be sorry if I don't, so... You want a cigarette and a blindfold?"

"I've smoked half a pack today and I don't think a blindfold is a good idea." He stripped out of his gloves. "I will, you know."

"I know. You're gonna have to get my trousers off."

"Avec plaisir." The Spy managed a grin even in the face of this particular intimacy, leaning in close until their noses bumped together as he got the Sniper's fly out of the way.

The Sniper directs him to where the cream is, and he does what he thinks is about the same job he'd watched the Sniper perform on himself. The other man's face is distressingly blank throughout the whole procedure, whenever the Spy glances up to try and gauge him. He feels... better, than the Spy had expected. Dry, if a little too soft. The cream doesn't feel like petroleum jelly at all, more like a hand lotion. He thinks it ought to be more pleasant but it isn't. It's just alien. He tries to liken the mechanics of the act to preparing for sex and all the details are too wrong.

Nothing has ever felt less like sex to him in his life than having two fingers up the Sniper's vagina feels now.

The fixed stare at the ceiling and the way the man breathes out through his nose and holds his legs open like he's on an exam table assures the Spy that that feeling is mutual, at least.

"Is that enough?" He asks, when he thinks the answer must be yes.

"Yeah, thanks." The Sniper's voice is tight, and he lets out a long relieved sigh when the Spy's hand pulls away. "Should go wash off."

"Right. Of course." He slides back off the bed, while the newlyweds on the television laugh over some double entendre he hadn't been paying attention to. He takes his time at the sink, in case the Sniper needs time to himself as well. When he returns, there's a certain amount of trepidation. "Did I-- Was that all right? I mean, I didn't hurt anything, or...?"

"No, it's just never much fun and I always feel a little dizzy. Not in the good way, either. Don't feel half as much like chundering as usual, though. Must be because your fingers are smaller than mine." He offers a smile and pulls the Spy up to lie close, in the circle of one arm. His good hand squeezes the other man's shoulder warmly.

"A great success, then."

"Don't think I could've asked anyone else to do that, you know." The Sniper's voice is low.

"I do not think I would have offered for anyone else. I-- I don't know if-- if it was anyone but you, would I-- I don't think I could understand any of this, if you weren't you. You know? Who you are was clear enough to me before all this. I don't know if anyone else... I don't know. I suppose I never have to."

"Yeah. Reckon."

"I think we could go on this show." He says, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. "I think we would do all right. I would have to disguise myself as a woman, of course."

"Yeah, don't think they'd accept a couple blokes." The Sniper chuckles.

"And you would never pass." The Spy rolls his eyes. "Unless their interview process is very different from what I imagine."

"Look..." The Sniper's voice is serious again, and the Spy frowns immediately, steeling himself for something far too weighty. "Just thanks. I know vaginas aren't your thing."

"It wasn't so bad." He shrugs. "I still don't want to fuck it-- tonight, I don't feel very up to much of anything, anyway-- but... It is only part of you, and it is only until you have your hand fixed, and it is only tonight, so... I am glad I could help."

"Would you... Would you be happier if I had a cock?"

The Spy sighs, turning to press his face into the Sniper's shoulder, hand sliding up to rest over the man's heart. "Mon grand, please, stop asking. Is there any point torturing yourself with it?"

"Maybe there is."

"I love you as you are. I-- I do, you know. The time we have spent just getting to be friends, the way even fighting got to be fun-- win or lose-- and then all of this... I don't give my heart often or easily, but I think it is true, to say I do love you. With what you have and with what you do not."

"Thanks."

He detaches, and the Spy wonders how that could have been the wrong answer. He'd said all that and meant it. He doesn't even watch as the Sniper rummages, one-handed, through his duffel. All he can think about are the words he didn't hear back.

The Sniper returns, and a brochure is placed in the Spy's hand. For a while, he's not sure what he's looking at. Then he's sure he's wrong.

"There's a surgery." The Sniper murmurs.

"There's-- And you never--?"

"Nah. I never. Flip it over here, these are them."

The Spy looks. And then he sees the measurements and he looks again. His eyes are like dinner plates and the Sniper groans.

"I don't think I understand anything anymore." The Spy says, his grip tightening on the shiny paper.

"They grow 'em in vats out of your DNA, down in Oz. That brochure's from a hospital in Adelaide."

"This is like science fiction!"

"Yeah, well..." He snorts. "Wait 'til you see the bloody place. They've had the technology a long time. Developed it to get folks who could afford 'em new livers and hearts, and lungs. Keep a lifetime of drinking and red meat and smoking from sending 'em to an early grave. First cock was for a bloke who had his bit off by a shark."

"By a... shark?"

"Yeah. Then they realized there was money in it-- not just for blokes who got into accidents with sharks and bar fights and heavy machinery, but anyone who wanted to graft on some extra length. Then they started marketing the temporary weekend graft as a novelty so they could sell 'em to women."

"You have to be joking now." The Spy shakes his head.

"Yeah. It's pretty stupid, but that's home. Cult of masculinity. Anywhere the Australium's been centered long enough it happens. No shame in anyone wanting a giant cock, but if you come in with a vag they don't think you want a permanent change, and even if I did... Well, look at 'em!"

"I am looking." He whistles.

The vat-grown cocks in the brochure come in three sizes: Large, Extra Large, and Saxton Hale. The Saxton Hale the Spy feels he should look away from.

"Give me that back." The Sniper growls, snatching it away. "You know they make you sign a waiver for that one, and anyone you fuck's got to sign one, too."

"I don't think Catherine the Great would sign a waiver to fuck that thing. And I am no Catherine the Great..." He rolls his eyes. "Still-- I mean-- All this time, you could have, and no one would have known? So why--?"

"Because it wouldn't have been mine! Because they think everyone who goes in wants something you could beat a horse to bloody death with and I don't want some standard issue novelty cock! Hell, even the women's size is enormous enough to look like a joke!"

"Have you ever seen one?" The Spy takes the brochure back. He can't find any information on these temporary cocks-for-women.

"Yeah. A girl fucked me with one once." He says bitterly. The Spy returns the brochure and doesn't ask questions. He doesn't need to, really-- if the Sniper called her a girl, then that was what she was, and clearly it wasn't a fun experience.

"I just don't understand, that's all."

"That's because you've always had yours. And it's always been yours. It belongs on the rest of your body. It's not a joke, it's not part of some pathological need to be swinging the biggest thing down between your legs that fucking everyone in the cities is a part of."

"But you wanted one?"

"Sometimes. I mean, hell, kept the damn brochure. But I don't want one of those. Besides... I know who I am. Even if no one else does, I do."

"I know who you are." The Spy takes his arm. "Even if there are things I don't understand, I know who you are."

"But you don't understand why I didn't just get the surgery."

"Not completely. I am trying to. Maybe I am starting to. I suppose I cannot see grafting one of those onto myself... I just thought you never could, and... I thought you never could, that's all."

"You want me to?"

He shakes his head. "I want you to be comfortable. I thought if you could have one, you would be, but apparently that is not the case after all. You always made it sound like the kind of place where you couldn't do that sort of thing, I am a little surprised--"

"It is. They don't make 'em for men like me. They make 'em for men who were already born with 'em, and they make 'em for girls who want to shock their boyfriends and piss out of moving vehicles just for one weekend, and have all their own plumbing intact. They don't make 'em for men like me."

"Could they?"

"Dunno. Afraid to look into it too hard. Even if they would, they... I mean, even if they did, maybe people would be fine with me trading up to a cock, sure, but... But you can be a man or you can sleep with one, you can't do both. Not back home." 

The Spy nods and wraps his arms around the Sniper, resting against him, the television a low drone in the background.


	13. Chapter Twelve

The Spy is quiet for a while come Sunday morning, and taut as a bowstring even while having his neck nuzzled at.

"Are you thinking about it?" The Sniper sighs.

"Well, I haven't forgotten about it, if that's what you're asking."

"You think I ought to do it?"

The Spy lets out an ungainly snort and flops onto his side. The turning of his back doesn't feel like a shut-out-- it displays too much trust to-- but the Sniper would rather have eye contact.

"Cher, the man I fell in love with wouldn't make his decision based on what I think about it."

There's a tiny hint of bitterness, when he says 'love'. The Sniper rolls onto his own side, draping his arm over the Spy's waist, his bandaged-up hand finding a home over the man's heart.

"No. If I'm gonna install anything permanent in the old corpse, it'll be for me. That doesn't mean you can't have an opinion about it, reckon. I mean, I do love you. You probably knew about it before I did..."

The Spy relaxes. It is a slow process, each of his muscles bleeding out tension until he is lax and malleable in the Sniper's hold, a soft smile on his lips.

"I would not have been so confident as to say I knew it before you did... At least, I am pleased to have some confirmation of the fact..."

"Yeah? C'mon, last night must've tipped you off good, the doctor who put me on the damn cream didn't even spend as much time up in there as you did."

"Then I suppose I worried over nothing." He sighs.

"Yeah, right, you worried." The Sniper rolls his eyes, before stopping short. "You worried?"

"Not 'worried'. I mean, I said it, you didn't, I would not say I worried, but I took note of it."

"Not big on saying stuff as much as doing stuff."

"I know. Maybe it was easier to focus on an imaginary slight than to think about the fact that people can just go get new genitals where you come from."

"Just cocks."

"Oh, just cocks."

"Premium on masculinity." He grumbles.

"Then... maybe... Wouldn't it be acceptable, for you to be one? If that is what your countrymen prize--"

"Cartoon masculinity." He shakes his head. "You saw the damn things. You've seen the ads from Mann Co. too. I probably could and no one would bat an eye, if what I wanted was to be one of them, if I wanted to bulk up and fuck women with a giant cock. I don't, so... shit out of luck, yeah?"

"Maybe. I don't know-- I don't understand it."

"Course not. You only get to see the stuff they let out of the country. Tech only gets out when the rest of the world is about to catch up to it. Enough to keep hold of the market, not enough to really share any meaningful advances. Folks are more normal out in the countryside, out where there's no Australium stockpiled, but hell, that's almost worse. Some yobbo in the city at least thinks everyone ought to want a cock, normal people sort of think it's silly, grafting on a bunch of useless stuff just for looks."

"Yes, I suppose at that size it is just for looks. The 'Large' was... not... I mean..." The Spy dithers. There's a surge of interest just remembering it.

"You would actually want that thing, what, in you?"

"If you have a fake one in the same size somewhere."

"Seems excessive to me."

"I admit just once I would like to try something that big. I wouldn't ask you to have one grafted on, but we could buy one."

"Yeah. Could find one sometime."

The Spy has other questions, about the surgery, the culture... about all of it. He saves the rest, turning around for a quick peck before getting up and heading for the bathroom, leaving the door unlatched as he goes through his morning routine.

He lets the Sniper lounge around in bed while he goes down to the lobby to fetch two cups of coffee. He doesn't expect him to have much success in getting dressed without a little bit of help, and he certainly doesn't expect him to attempt a shower with his bandaged hand. The Sniper may be surprisingly clean for a man who lives in a van and hordes urine to use as a weapon, but he isn't fastidious enough to be bothered.

When the Spy returns to the room, the Sniper accepts the coffee with a grateful, easy smile.

"Breakfast of champions." He lifts his cardboard cup in a toast.

The Spy meets it with a gentle touch of his own, a gentler smirk. It's amazing the number of expressions he has that fit under that banner. They range from mild amusement to disdain, from love to hate. His lips curve almost naturally into the state, and the Sniper wonders if he's even seen them all.

"How about next weekend I don't hurt myself and we have a lot more fun?" He offers.

"Is that a promise?"

"Dunno... will you bring me coffee in bed even if I'm not an invalid?"

"Hm... ask me very nicely and I might."

The Sniper smirks back at that, resting his bandaged hand at the Spy's hip. "Oh, I can ask very nicely."

"I'll bet you can." The Spy leans in, his lips grazing the Sniper's cheeks, avoiding a kiss deep enough to share the taste that develops on the tongue in the middle of a cup of cheap coffee. He just wants the closeness. It's incredible how close they've gotten already, and he likes having a moment to chart the deepening trust between them from its early days on. It doesn't matter how many times he goes over it in his head, it always seems unbelievable. He was twelve years old when he decided that miracles didn't exist, and now, pushing forty, he wonders if there is such a thing as a quiet miracle. A man-made miracle. It still defies logic and it still requires faith, even if it is not from the hands of any God.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has a past... and sometimes, everyone needs to share it.

Sunday night, he lets the Spy drive his van all the way back from town, the knuckles of his good hand white where he grips at the dash.

"I can't believe you don't trust me to drive."

"She takes some delicate handling!"

"I have spent more time driving than I have plumbing the depths of-- I mean, I know how to drive a van!"

"Nothing between my legs is gonna kill us both of a windstorm pops up all of a sudden."

The Spy snorts at that, and it only takes a few moments of him trying to smother his amusement before the Sniper is chuckling along with him.

"I don't think a windstorm is likely, mon beau."

"Yeah, 'kay. Just... keep an eye out."

"For everything." The Spy promises.

He parks a little further from the base than the Sniper usually keeps himself, the back of the camper to the base to keep them hidden from sight as they slide out of the cab.

"The Medic--" The Spy starts.

"I know, believe me, I'm going. Gotta be better than the last time."

The Spy makes a small, satisfied noise at that, giving the other man a quick goodbye kiss before vanishing. The Sniper slouches toward the base, arm carried carefully. At least the Medic is in residence tidying up the little infirmary.

"Couldn't persuade you to pull out the medigun, could I, Doc?" He leans against the wall, holding his hand up. "Climbing accident over the weekend."

The Medic gives him a sharp look over the rims of his glasses. "And will there be any point in lecturing you? I would let you all suffer your weekend injuries to teach you a lesson about personal responsibility, but then I would be facing BLU all by myself! Ah-- Of course! You were not here. Every man in this base has been a walking disaster zone. We had a kitchen fire, a surprisingly gruesome accident with a spoon at breakfast... You know, I almost admire that one, it takes a special kind of skill for a man to debilitate himself with a spoon... Soldier chased Scout up onto the roof and they both came crashing down, the Engineer sliced his hand open in his workshop..."

The Medic sighs heavily, before glancing back up at the Sniper's rapidly ascending eyebrows.

"So, typical weekend." He finishes. "That spoon one was hilarious... I mean, what are the odds? It was his only eye!"

"Doc." The Sniper interrupts, when the Medic's cackling seems to have distracted him from the matter at hand. "While we're young, yeah?"

"Of course, it's in the office, this way. I just finished calibrating it for Monday. Want to be in top shape, after all."

He follows the other man through the small door off the infirmary, to where the medigun is dominating his desk, a set of tools scattered about and the personal photos all moved out of the way.

Most are of birds, or old black and white pictures of his graduation, and his parents. There is one, of a woman with a strong jaw and a soft halo of pale curls. Just the shoulders of a pretty floral dress or blouse are visible. Her smile is shy and soft, and there's a gentleness in her eyes that the Sniper can't imagine the Medic prizing.

"Lili." He nods, following the Sniper's eyes. "I asked her to marry me... Too late, as it happened."

The Sniper waits until the job is done, before unwinding his bandages and dropping them in the bin marked MEDICAL WASTE. He gives the photo another look.

"Someone else steal your girl?"

"In... in a manner of speaking. She was the only woman I ever loved-- perhaps we would not have been a perfect match, there were things... We could have come to an understanding, if I had asked her sooner. She was a singer..."

"Not in the nightclub where girls throw rubber cocks around?" Sniper chuckles.

"They were all like that, for a while." Medic says, a nostalgic smile washing over him. "I think it is easy for everyone to forget, but we did have fun in Germany, before the war. We had a lot of fun... girls in trousers, boys in dresses, people who were both or who were neither, and everyone dancing with anybody. She was classier than that-- she didn't throw anything at anyone. She just sang, early in the evening, before the rowdy acts. When the place was just filling up... And after, we would talk. I didn't see the writing on the wall soon enough. Maybe others did, but when I was not drinking and having fun with beautiful people, I was working my ass off, and when I was not assisting the surgeons, I was forgetting the stress of work by drinking, and usually with someone in my lap-- or me in someone's! And then raids on nightclubs started. I thought if we married, no one would be suspicious... we could say we were saving up money to start a family... all that. Well. As I said, I asked too late."

The Sniper isn't sure what to say to all of that. He hadn't come in for a deep heart-to-heart, but maybe, with what the Medic knew about him, it was only fair.

"Sorry." He says at last.

"So am I. For her... and for you. I have kept up with any kind of research that could have helped her, even knowing the likelihood of her having survived the war is... I have kept up with it, and sometimes I think I could improve it, just as a thought experiment." He sighs. "I don't know a single thing about doing the opposite."

"Oppo--" He blinks. "Oh. Er. Doc... Thanks for being sorry, but-- Not necessary. I mean, if we're on the same page, you're talking about surgery..."

The Medic nods, still staring at the picture on top of his filing cabinet.

"I'm good for now." The Sniper shrugs. It sounds stupid once it's out, but it's true...

"Good for now?" The Medic's brow furrowed. "You don't want to change?"

"Not desperate for it."

"Lili was." He nods a little, sucking his lips in. "I was going to use my work in the hospital to forge her a new old birth certificate, so we could get married, and then... then I thought I would figure out the surgery, no one needed to know about it. There was so much she was heartbroken over, things I knew I did not have the ability to fix, but I thought I could figure out enough! If I'd gotten her out of Germany maybe... I let that area of research go to others, after... I keep up with it, but my work here takes focus. And invulnerability is a very rewarding development. I just promised her so much..."

The Sniper nods. "Well, at the moment, I don't need any... work done. If I did... You're really interested in swapping out genitals?"

The Medic laughs at that, quick and surprised. "You may call it that, yes."

The Sniper chews the inside of his cheek a moment, then nods. "Wait for the developments that come out of Australia, then. We, uh... We're already doing a lot of organ replacement, so..."

He doesn't bring up the brochure-- it's bad enough mentioning any technological developments, and if he handed the brochure over and anyone else saw it, it could mean his visa. Still, he knows this will follow the same pattern-- if someone outside the country makes a big enough step forward, he knows the Australian doctors will jump in with what they have. At least that way the Medic knows where to look, even if it's the 'opposite problem'.

Maybe, he tells himself. Maybe if the Doc proves good enough about keeping secrets, he can throw him the brochure, even if it isn't quite what the man's been working out in his spare time.

At least he leaves the office understanding why the state of his genitals had been so quickly and quietly accepted. He realizes on the walk back to his camper that that had really been the sticking point-- that he didn't know why the Medic was so easy about the whole thing. Now that he knew this, he didn't expect to be the subject of a surprise experiment-- well, no more than anyone else on the team! He expects it's why the Medic told him as much as he did, not because he was particularly keen to dig out the ghosts of his own past, but because there might always be a question otherwise.

"Appreciate the help on the wrist," The Sniper calls back, from midway down the hall. It doesn't cover the half of what he appreciates, but he reckons the Doc gets it, as he hears the faint response float out after him, words too muted to catch, meaning clear enough.

A part of him wants to tell the Spy about it, but he knows he won't. Doctor-patient confidentiality may not normally work both ways, but it will be enough to promise the Spy that the Medic really doesn't care about that, without breaking a friend's trust.

Back in his camper, he's uneasy again, though the Medic has nothing to do with it this time. It's the longest he's gone in a long, long time, without calling home. No matter where he'd been in the world, he managed to talk to them once a weekend, Monday at the latest, and if he couldn't call, he wrote. Now he's done neither since that last call...

He's half-afraid they wouldn't answer, if he did. He's half-afraid they would. How much time do they need? Without knowing if talking would make it better or worse, he's afraid to do anything. He could show up on their doorstep, after his contract with RED is up, and they could either let him in or turn him away then, but he's not so sure that's right, either.

He misses their voices. Even the terse grumpiness his dad had adopted when he took up mercenary work... well, moreso than usual. He misses thinking of the station as his home, a place he could go back to no matter how far he roamed and no matter what he did. He misses his mum's cooking, and his dad's stubborn refusal to take things easy in his golden years, and the way everything in that house is older than he is-- and he doubts his dad has replaced anything much since he's been gone-- and kept working.

He misses being their kid, but he doesn't miss being their daughter, and he doesn't know how that's supposed to work. He can really only hope it will.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're lucky, you also get a future.

Wednesday night, he tells the Spy what he can, confessions measured out in small doses, only his own feelings. The rest stays bottled up inside. There's only so much he's prepared to admit to, when it comes to his own homesickness and half-formed regrets. It's easier to say he'd half like to hand the brochure on the surgery over to the Medic to see his face. Still, he sneaks in some admission of longing, in between lighter stories of life on the RED base in the early part of the week.

"I am not much a part of team unity." The Spy admits, with a soft snort. "I think things run normally. I brought something, if you want to... If you are interested in hearing."

He digs out a folded and slightly-crumpled sheet of BLU stationery, unfolds it to display a tight, spidery scrawl, each letter tiny and tilted, with little spatters of ink at the end of each word.

The words are in french, but the Sniper nods anyway.

"I copied down just some bits... some bits and pieces of a poem, I found it in one of the old books I had brought with me, I was flipping through it last night and I thought of you. I thought so strongly of you at it."

"Read to me." The Sniper smiles, settling against him.

"Caressant l'œil distrait l'épaule de la mer  
(Ma sandale est mouillée à l'aile décousue)  
Je sens ma main gonflée sur ta chaleur moussue  
S'emplir de blancs troupeaux invisibles dans l'air.

Vont paître mes agneaux de ta hanche à ton cou,  
Brouter une herbe fine et du soleil brûlée,  
Des fleurs d'acacia dans ta voix sont roulées  
Va l'abeille voler le miel de leurs échos."

"What's it mean?" The Sniper interrupts, as the Spy draws a breath.

"Well... I cannot do a poetic translation, but... euh, 'Caressing the shoulder of the sea with my eye distracted, my sandal wet and the wing unstitched, I feel my hand swollen on your mossy heat, full of white flocks invisible in the air. From your neck my sheep to your hips graze, browsing a fine grass burnt in the sun. Flowers of acacia are in your voice rolling, the bee will steal the honey of the echoes'. It... it begins by calling to a shepherd-- the whole poem does. That is why the sheep, I expect."

"Mm."

"It's to a man-- they all are. This one is more ambiguous than some-- it mentions men and girls both. There was more. About sheep and horses and the sea, and roses and pearls, and being flayed open, and tongues caressing things... too long to copy in full, or for me to try to translate with any artfulness. But the feeling it gave me was very much of you."

"'S nice. Don't think I've ever heard a dirty poem by a woman."

The Spy laughs. "Oh, cher, the author is not a woman."

He blinks, the realization slow in dawning, and the Spy laughs all over again before he can recover.

"You-- You frenchmen just let pooftahs publish indecent poetry? Bloody hell, I could get to like France."

The Spy collapses against him with another bout of laughter, before wiping at his eyes and kissing the Sniper's cheeks. "If you are a good enough poet, mon amour, you may publish indecency to your heart's content, provided you go through the correct channels. Sadly, I cannot write odes to your genitals. I am a decent flatterer but at best a mediocre poet, the most I could get away with may be writing of your arms and lips."

"For the best. Don't need the world reading dirty poems about my stuff."

"Mm."

"Reckon you know I'm no poet. A limerick, maybe. Dunno if there's a market for dirty limericks in France." He chuckles. "Hey... how do you get used to it?"

"Used to what, cher?"

"To... to being alone in the world."

"I am not alone in the world, now. That, I find difficult to get used to, but I am glad of it."

"How long does it take, to be all right, when you don't-- don't have a family?"

His smile falters. "Oh... Mon beau, mon beau... my circumstances were dire. I had known few relatives and few friends. It was not easy to lose those that I had, but I was so lucky to have my own life that I pushed through that. I did not have much choice. No time to mourn the way I might have. You still have a family. They still have a chance to-- to mend things. Don't mourn them too soon."

"Just afraid to call, yeah?"

"Give them some time, then, and yourself. You are their only son-- you are all they have as well, yes?"

"Yeah. Only child. So are both my parents."

"Then they will be glad to hear from you again when you call. You are what they live on in. I don't mean to say it will be easy, I can't imagine what it will be like, but I cannot believe they would rather lose their only child. No parent can want that, can they?"

"Dunno. Things are... atmosphere's not real accepting out there."

The Spy gives his jaw a quick nuzzle and holds him tight. "So it will be a process. You need to decide if it will be better for you to take a chance on that process, or to cut ties completely before you can know."

"No. I don't want to do that. I just don't know how to get them to understand." He shakes his head.

"Well... then maybe they do not need to understand to love you. I think my parents would not understand me. I kill men for a living... I have done things for money, and my clients have not always been in the right, and not every job I took was out of necessity. Even if they could accept that I would never be the type to give them grandchildren, could they understand the work that I do? But, I like to believe that even if they were baffled by me, or dismayed, they would love what was theirs. I was young when they died... too young and in too-dangerous times for us to have butted heads the way that parents and their grown children do. I did not learn their flaws, or chafe under their expectations... There is so much I do not know, about what family life ought to be like. Maybe that is the only reason I have some idealism left there. It is the one place I have never discovered the truths that lead to cynicism."

"Good." Sniper chews on his lip.

Outside of the romantic nature that their time alone together allowed for, he doesn't think there are very many arenas in which the Spy is not cynical. Their kind of work-- the Spy's kind especially-- engenders a more-than-healthy amount. It's nice to think there's a little oasis of the soul, apart from him, where the Spy lives in an ideal world. The reason behind it is a shame, but he loves every affirmation he finds of the Spy's capacity for unconditional love, and every little speck of optimism in the face of a hard life.

"I'd like a family, you know." He says, when the camper has been silent long enough. "With you, and... dunno. I mean, I always have. I trust you to be part of it."

The Spy beams up at him and gives him a squeeze. "And I you. I have gone a long time with no family, I should like to call you mine."

"Would you want a kid?"

The Spy shakes his head. "I adore them... my life is too dangerous."

"Will it always be?"

"I don't know. But there are some rather strict laws against kidnapping, and I have a difficult time imagining you pregnant."

"Yeah, nah. There's other ways to work it out, if... if we ever retired, and you thought... Anyway, now's not the time to worry about it."

"No... not the time to worry about it. A fine enough time to establish our feelings for now on the subject, but not the time to make any plans." He chuckles softly and drops a kiss to the Sniper's chest. "I need to go. I keep wanting to fall asleep in your arms..."

"This weekend, then." He gives the Spy a tired grin and lets him slip out of the bed. "Hey... What if we drove up out of the desert? Someplace with trees that turn, it's getting to be the time for it. We wouldn't have much time, but it's not like we wouldn't have a bed. And the town's so dry the trees aren't even green in spring, so it's not like seeing 'em in September's any kind of a treat. Just a change of air..."

The Spy nods, leaning against the bunk to linger a little longer. "I would like that. I do get sick of all the dust sometimes. I miss proper seasons. Somewhere, there are apples hanging from boughs and I will not swelter through my shirt after half a minute under the sun."

"All right. Friday night come out and meet me soon as you can, and I'll start us driving."

They kiss again, they part, and on Friday, the Spy is later than the Sniper thought was implied by 'as soon as you can', but he comes bearing an armload of Tupperware containers with pale blue lids.

"Have you eaten?"

The Sniper shakes his head. He'd been expecting to head out early and hadn't bothered. This adds another delay, but not really any later than if they'd eaten with their own teams and met up later.

"If you want something you can eat while you drive, I suppose we can save the peas and potatoes." The Spy reasons, passing off two of his containers.

"Sounds good. We'll always need to eat later, and I've got a small fridge."

The Sniper stores them in the camper and opens the passenger side door of the truck for the Spy.

"So. Introducing me to the finer points of fancy french cuisine?" He teases gently, pulling out onto the flat clay and heading for the road out past the bases.

"No, actually. I borrowed the recipes from a teammate-- apparently, mine start too many arguments." He smirks, popping one of his containers open and handing the Sniper a hand-sized pie.

The moment he bites into it, the Sniper is transported, and the flatness and familiarity of the terrain is a handy thing to fall back on as he lets his eyes close a moment.

"Fuck that's good..." He groans. The quality of the meat is not as high as home, but the seasonings might just be better, and it's the closest thing he's had in a long time that he hasn't made himself. He could never get the crust right on a meat pie, anyway, gave it up as too fussy.

The Spy has two containers, and after they've both finished their separate pies, the Spy wiping his hands delicately on a handkerchief and the Sniper wiping his own hand off on the front of his shirt, the Spy opens the second and breaks a half a loaf of bread into two near-equal hunks.

It's sweet and not quite familiar, outside of being a fairly basic raisin bread. It's no recipe he knows, but bread is comfortingly familiar in any form, he thinks. The pleasant yeastiness, the mouthfeel of it. It could stand to be denser, but that's just the Sniper's own taste, and if the Spy likes his a little lighter, it's certainly nothing he can't compromise on. It's free bread, after all.

The bread may have been a staple, but he would bet anything the Spy had made a point of asking his own team's sniper for a good dinner recipe. He didn't expect 'coincidence' when the Spy was concerned, he expected careful planning, and the timing was enough to make it suspect.

It's... nice. He'd never really had anyone do something like this for him. No one close enough to want to, since he left home-- he certainly hadn't ever had the kind of lover who'd make him dinner before. On the heels of his admission of homesickness and worries, and on calling the Spy good as family, it definitely seems deliberate to him to find a familiar dish as part of their dinner.

When they stop driving for the night and retire to his bunk, he doesn't have time to thank the other man, before his shirt is being stripped away. It's gentle more than voracious, and the Spy turns him around and kisses his back, between his shoulderblades.

He stays where he is, neither of them speaking, as the Spy kneads at his back, seeking out all the places that tire after a long day of sniping, and all the ones that will protest a long day of driving. He's clinging to the bunk and ready to let his legs just give out by the time the Spy is done relaxing him.

"Thanks." He sighs, turning for a kiss. "You're fantastic."

"I am. You are lucky to have me, I am a gem." The Spy grins. "Ah, no, you are a treasure. Only remember how good I am to you on nights like this one the next time I am an idiot, all right?"

"Yeah."

The Spy finishes undressing him, and he pulls himself up onto his bunk, and pulls the Spy into his arms after. Between the desert night outside the camper and the man bundled up close against him, and especially with a full belly, it's easier to fall asleep than it's been in a long time.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road trip

The worst part of the road trip they've undertaken isn't all the time spent in the cramped cab, and it isn't the fact that they know it really won't be a getaway so much as a long drive, a quick look around at something that isn't desert, and a long drive back. The worst part, to the Spy, is when they roll to a stop just to the side of the ill-defined road and the Sniper tells him that if he's got to go, this is the time and place-- unless he wants to try borrowing a jar while they're moving, an action he doesn't suggest.

The Sniper is the one who has to grab a funnel and worry about getting himself clean and dry after, the Spy only has to pull his zipper down and go, and it still takes him longer. He can't make himself do it, for long minutes, feeling like an idiot as he stands out in the dirt with his cock in his hand.

"Look, if you're prissy about germs--" The Sniper startles him, popping back out of the camper. "Sorry. I mean, if that's the problem, I've got wipes. Don't pull that face, sometimes a couple of baby wipes is the closest thing to a shower you get out in the middle of nowhere. Long as you bag 'em up to toss when you get to civilization. I mean, 'specially out in the desert, you can't waste the water rigging up a camp shower."

"I feel exposed." The Spy grumbles.

"Happens when you're pointing your junk at the road." He snorts. "If you want, I'm done, you can use the other side and I promise not to peek."

"You've seen it. And that's not-- I just-- Outdoors..." He shudders, but even though both sides of the van are just as open, once he's not facing what passes for a road, it's a little bit easier.

He accepts the sanitizing wipe, even though he's fairly certain it comes with a mocking smirk. There's a waste bin with an airtight seal at the lid in the camper, its sleek, futuristic lines marred by the fact that the Sniper has scrawled 'biowaste' on it in permanent marker, and the Spy drops the wipe in and doesn't think about the contents. He doesn't think about the contents as hard as he can not-think.

They drive on a few more miles after that, before pulling over to sleep. It's not much distance, but the Spy is grateful for it somehow. It just puts the site of his struggle to piss outdoors further from them, and that he can appreciate.

In the morning, the Sniper makes a pot of coffee and mushes the leftover peas and potatoes that the Spy had brought together. It doesn't look appealing, but after he gives it a little reheating, it tastes fine-- not at all like a breakfast food, but the Spy embraces that more readily than he did the bathroom break. Part of the road trip experience...

It strikes him that this is their first honest 'trip' experience. The drives into town are long when compared with the average work commute, but not like this, and once they get there, they spend the weekend together normally. This is just the two of them in the Sniper's van, trying to make it to someplace that experiences weather before they have to turn back and hurry 'home' to the bases.

He winds up dropping to his knees after breakfast for a quickie-- it will eat up time, but it might keep them from biting each other's heads off on the road. At least, that's how he rationalizes it, and the Sniper turns to the side in his seat and grips the edge of the little table and spreads his legs for him in anticipation, not yet dressed in anything but the undershirt and boxer shorts he'd slept in.

There's a sharp tang to his sweat, almost metallic, that the Spy used to chalk up to being part of the battlefield, back when all they did was chat a little between fights. The barrel of his rifle, his personal supply of ammunition, the well-kept blade of the kukri, those things added into his own personal aroma. It was odd to find that it was just him, but not unpleasant. He liked the lingering reminder of the other man's skill with his preferred weapons, and that little note of metal-- or of blood-- provided that.

He feels more confident, after the last weekend, when it comes to handling the Sniper's genitalia situation. As unpleasant as he thinks it was for both of them, it did remove some of the creeping terror, and now when his tongue or his hand slips a little, he doesn't jerk away too quickly, merely slides back up to where he's wanted and doesn't dwell on a fleeting touch. He's sure that part of it is the new familiarization he has, but it's less the physical mapping out as it is the reassurance of knowledge. There's none of the viscous wetness he dislikes in women, just soft warm folds of skin, and if in the course of stroking up and down the Sniper's thighs, one thumb brushes against him there, he gets no complaint.

He lifts his head, giving the Sniper's clit a couple slow tugs between his first two fingers. "Any way you like to be touched that I don't know about yet?"

"You're pretty good at figuring me out." The Sniper grins down at him, one hand joining the Spy's, guiding him a little. "Why, you want some help?"

The Spy does-- he's glad to hear he doesn't need it, but he loves watching the way the Sniper's hand covers his. He loves having the reins taken away, and the sureness behind the heavily-lidded eyes that gaze down at him.

"Fuck, Spy, you've got good hands... Yeah, that's right, touch me there, want you to, bring that mouth up here..."

That request he's more than willing to satisfy, open mouth sliding up the lean muscles of the Sniper's abdomen, to the wide flat expanse between the small, flat breasts.

The Sniper kisses him once, hard, before directing him back down to his chest.

"Teeth." He hisses.

The Spy lets his teeth scrape over the jut of a collarbone, lets them close gently but firmly over one hard nipple, until the Sniper's hips push forward against his hand and still for one long beat, until the Sniper's hand drops away from his own and he hears a long sigh.

"Perfect." He winks down at the Spy, tugging his boxers back up into place and giving the other man a hand. He backs him up against the bunk and wraps a hand around him, takes him standing.

The Spy doesn't think handjobs have any right being this good, but the Sniper pins him into place with his whole body, holds his wrists together over his head and sucks big bites into the side of his throat as he works him, and cleans up the mess with the hem of his own undershirt.

The drive is still a long one, but every time he gets irritated with the Sniper, he reminds himself of the look the other man gave him back in the camper after breakfast, and presses a couple of fingers to one of the bruises on his neck, and it's enough of a reason not to start a fight over something unimportant.

They reach a town not so different from the one where they spend most of their weekends-- the only difference is that it's up in the foothills, where the rain falls more than once a year, and there are trees starting to turn. The Sniper parks near an orchard and the Spy steals a couple of apples.

The cloak wasn't strictly necessary, but he feels like showing off.

They have little time to enjoy the crisp air, the difference from the desert-- if they don't turn back, they won't make it to the bases in time.

Spy makes the Sniper pull over again, when they pass the fruit stand that the orchard owners operate. He pays them double what they ask, more than enough to cover the little bit he'd taken off the trees.

"Some tip." The Sniper says.

"I can afford to." He shrugs, mouth a tight line. He spends the next hour staring out the window dead ahead.

"I just mean it was nice of you." He only adds it after enough time has passed.

"I doubt I am the only person to hop their fence and take a couple. I am the one who can pay for them, though. Maybe I covered the tab for another thief. It's not easy to raise food."

"No. Don't reckon it ever is."

"I have no compunctions against stealing, mind. But I don't like to steal food. Information? But of course. Valuables, once or twice, when the price was right and the owner could stand to part with them-- or deserved to. But food? I can afford to buy food. I am never going to go hungry."

"Sure." The Sniper nods.

They drive on until after dark, mostly in silence. When they finally crawl into bed, the Sniper wraps the Spy up in his arms and nuzzles into his hair until he relaxes. He doesn't think he needs to ask, about whether or not the Spy has stolen food before. Even if he didn't have a reasonable idea of the answer, he thinks he knows enough about when it isn't time to ask a question.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

The plans they make grow more and more solid, as the end dates on their respective contracts near. Less like stories they tell each other and more like things that might happen.

The first time the Sniper calls his parents after coming out to them, he gets the answering service and doesn't leave a message, but when he calls back on Sunday, before heading back to base, his mother picks up.

There's still an awkward tightness to her voice, when she does recognize his voice, and the conversation isn't long, but she says 'we miss you, Vic' before they hang up.

It counts for something.

The Spy stays late, when they pull into the Sniper's usual spot outside the RED base, slipping into the camper with him instead of disappearing back to the BLU side.

"I don't have to be back until morning." He offers, stroking the Sniper's cheek.

"Yeah, nah, you should though. I'm good. Really."

"Are you?"

"Think so, yeah. I think mum will come around, maybe not-- maybe not all the way, I dunno, but... I believe her, at least. When she says she still cares, I believe her. Maybe a visit wouldn't be a mistake, when we're out of here. A short one."

"If you will play tour guide for me, when we go... once I know my way around a little, you can leave me to sightsee and go to your parents'... and then you will come with me? I have been looking into finding a place to settle down-- I mean, as well as anyone can look, from an ocean away. It's a start."

"Yeah." The Sniper nods. "It's a start."

"Let me stay a little while?"

"Little while." He pats the bed, climbing up first to give the Spy an easier exit and then offering him a hand after.

It's strange to think about how long he's had the Spy in his life as more than an enemy. The way they take their time makes it hard to measure right, and when he does he's shocked at it. Measuring from when he showed the Spy his old childhood picture, instead of from the start of their friendship or their relationship-- that was the real tipping point, for him-- it's amazing how much time he's managed to spend with another human being, letting him get in close.

"Would it be stupid to... to ask about you meeting them? My parents. Nah, it would be, forget I said anything..."

"If you want me there, I will go. You can introduce me however you like and I will stick to your story."

"I don't know what they'd think of you. I don't want to drag you out there and put you through it all just for them to hate you... and I don't-- I don't want... What if it wasn't you they hated, even?"

"I enjoy not being hated." The Spy yawns, pulling the Sniper's hand up to rest over his chest.

"I want them to like you, but... I bring a man home and they'll think... You know?"

The Spy nods slowly. "I suppose it all depends on whether or not you are comfortable with your parents knowing you are a homophile."

"They're not gonna think I'm a homophile!" He snaps. "They're gonna think I'm a bloody woman with a mental problem! Hell, that's already what they've been thinking, isn't it?"

The Spy bites down on the inside of his cheek and doesn't rise to the bait-- there is an impulse, to point out that it's no use snapping at the one person who thinks of him as a man first regardless of the state of his genitals, but he didn't stay just to start a fight. He wanted to stay so that the Sniper wouldn't be alone with his stress.

"Sorry." The Sniper noses the back of his neck a moment later. "You didn't deserve that."

"I understand. Well... I don't... I don't understand well. But I know it wasn't meant for me."

"Fuck. I want them to know I'm settling down and quitting my job and happy with someone. I just don't want the questions. But they'll have questions whether I'm alone or not, and maybe I would rather have you with me. I just don't know."

"You have some time yet to decide."

"Yeah. Time to decide a lot of things." He sighs. His thoughts stray back to the brochure and the surgery. Even if it wasn't for him... could he get a weekend with one, to know for sure? Was it even possible to get something that wasn't ridiculously oversized?

He could get a hysterectomy, at least. Get rid of all that and have marginally less to worry about? Maybe yanking all the lady business would be for the best. With or without the graft, he hates the idea of having a doctor tell him he's got ovarian cancer or something, he doesn't think he could deal with that. His lungs or his stomach or anything else, that would be fine. Fly back to Oz and get an organ replacement done, he has the money.

He thinks the Spy would understand that. He can ask again later, for the Spy's opinions on the rest... not just the subject of him having or not having a cock, but what he'd think about the outpatient recovery and how he'd handle it if it wasn't permanent after all, and what it would be like just to live with.

He thinks again about showing the brochure to the Medic-- still risky, but the Medic has been very good about his secret, and a decent friend besides, even if he's low on the man's priorities out on the battlefield.

He pulls it out, as the Spy leaves the bed.

"Thinking about having it done after all?" The Spy turns back to look at it with him.

"Dunno if I'd go that far. If I could get one that was mine? I'd do it, sure. Some days I wake up feeling like it belongs there. But other days I wake up and I don't feel anything at all about any of it, and maybe that's better than grafting on something that doesn't fit me."

"Maybe it is." The Spy allows.

"I was thinking about handing it off to the doc as a curiosity. I mean... you and me, we'll be heading off there by Christmastime, won't we? Could pick up an up-to-date one, who knows... Who knows, right?"

"I certainly don't." The Spy snorts, giving the Sniper's arm a squeeze. "If you take it back with you after or tell him to burn it once he's read it, just so that it can't accidentally be found by someone else. I have done enough snooping through our own infirmary to know the places are hardly so secure."

"Snooping in your team's infirmary? I thought what we had was special, you and me and my drawers being rummaged through." He teases.

"Oh, believe me, yours are the only drawers I intend to rummage through, mon grand. But I rifle through cupboards when I find them unlocked... just a fair warning."

"Spy... if I-- if I got this done, you know... you know there's a difference between doing something because of you and doing something for you, right?"

The Spy cocks his head to the side, returning the Sniper's earnest look. "Go on."

"If I'm getting a surgery, a permanent surgery, I'm the only man I'm doing it for. It's not a toy and it's not a present, it's my body. It wouldn't be for you."

"Even I am not so vain as to presume."

"Well, you're pretty vain."

"Mm. Carly Simon wrote a song about me once."

"Sometimes I can't tell whether or not you're joking..."

"I joke, I joke." His hand finds the Sniper's again. "I know."

"Still... that doesn't mean... It doesn't mean..." The Sniper struggles, giving the Spy's fingers a squeeze. "Before you, I didn't have many... much... I sucked a stranger off in a loo in Italy once, and another outside a nightclub, fuck if I remember where, and there was a bloke I'd do regular favours for before I left Australia for the last time but he never saw me naked. And there was the girl with the temporary cock who I went home with because I was new to the city and I thought it meant she was like me, only it turned out she just thought I was a lesbian and we might as well both experiment while she had it on. That's it. And I could get myself off fine and I didn't care."

The Spy bites the inside of his cheek again and wonders if he should feel guilty about his own sexual history, in light of that. Still, he can tell getting the story out is difficult enough without his interrupting, and he would like to hear the rest. He nods and doesn't speak, and after a moment, the Sniper lets out a grateful sigh and manages to continue.

"I never would have asked about whether it was possible to get one custom made, because I didn't really look at sex as something... reciprocal. Learned to like sucking cock well enough, but letting anyone else get me off was uncomfortable. It would have been just as uncomfortable if I had had a cock. Just not wired right to... to deal with people, yeah? You know what it's like to struggle to trust someone to touch you. A lot of it's just that. I never would have bothered because I learned to get comfortable in my own skin, but I never got comfortable with someone else's, 'til you. So. Thanks, for that."

"You are more than welcome."

"And that's the difference, I guess. Between doing it for you and doing it because you... you and me could have a future and maybe that future, maybe I do change my body some. If you asked me to, I'd dig my heels in and refuse, but you haven't. So... I don't know. I know there's one I want and I know there's one I don't, and the cock graft all depends, I guess."

"Tell me about the others." Spy leans against the bunk heavily and allows himself more time.

"Would like to have all the internal stuff taken out. Might freeze the eggs, if... if you ever did want to have kids that were ours, if we could ever find someone who'd carry 'em, and I don't know if that's possible. Maybe no one would. There are places it wouldn't be safe to ask. Maybe we'd have to lie to make it happen. I don't know. It's just a thought. But first I want all the, the stuff out of me."

"Considering what I have learned of medical science in Australia, not an unreasonable desire." The Spy nods. "What don't you want-- aside from having a Tom of Finland drawing soldered onto yourself."

He snorts. "Mastectomy. I mean... I never had much there, they're easy to hide... Why bother?"

He pokes at one, expression wry. The tissue dips at his touch and jiggles as his finger pulls away, and then it's still except for his breathing. The Spy's own contemplation of the Sniper's chest is more thoughtful, one thumb very gently circling a nipple. He doesn't play around with the slight bounce, just watches the nipple slowly stiffen.

He tries to put himself in the position. Would he bother? Maybe he would, if he were graced with a more generous bustline, but the Sniper has a point... going under the knife for such a little difference?

"Maybe someday you'll put on some weight around the middle and they won't stand out. But if I am the only one seeing them, I have no complaints." He nods.

"Yeah." The Sniper chuckles, touching the Spy's chin to draw him in for a quick peck. "Just be another set of saggy old man tits. Thanks."

"As you said, it's your body."

"Damn straight. But you make having a body more fun, so..."

He glances at the door and then back to the Sniper. He gives one last look at his shoes and jacket, and climbs back up onto the bunk.

"I will wake up in time." He murmurs, pulling one of the other man's arms around him. "I don't feel like making the trip just yet-- no moon out."

"Right. Don't want to sprain an ankle out between the bases at night." He holds the Spy close. It's easier to put the big decisions aside for the future, when he has the Spy's breathing to help even his own.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

Friday night, the Spy stops the Sniper from leaving the camper.

"You don't wanna drive up to town?"

"In a bit." He guides one of the Sniper's hands to his waist, places his own on the man's shoulder.

They don't dance, or even sway, but they stand there and gaze at each other a long sweet moment before even leaning in for a kiss.

"One for the road?" The Spy offers, hooking two fingers into the Sniper's waistband. "I've been thinking about you all day..."

"Act like we haven't seen each other." He snorts. "Saw you today."

"You wrestled me to the ground and stabbed me today." The Spy corrects. "It was very awkward, I respawned with a hard-on and everything."

"Aw, poor baby."

There's mockery in his voice, but he tugs the Spy in close and grabs onto his backside with both hands, and the Spy rocks forward onto the balls of his feet with a little gasp and a grin.

He turns them around, gets the Sniper on one of the seats and kneels down, stripping off and discarding the other man's trousers so that he can position himself between his thighs.

"Touch me?"

"That was the plan, mon beau."

The Sniper places his hand over the Spy's and guides him down, watching the man's eyes widen.

"Just like this," The Sniper directs, leads the Spy past his usual stopping point to stroke up and down his labia.

"I... I thought you didn't really like it."

"I like it." He sighs. "Just on the outside..."

"All right." The Spy breathes, watches the progress of his fingers as the Sniper's hand falls away. It's different, touching him this way on purpose-- he'd stopped freaking out over an accidental touch, thinking he'd understood the difference between 'preferable', 'not-unwelcome', and 'uncomfortable'. Now he has to restructure the way he thinks about the Sniper's genitals again.

It's easier this time. Brushing aside a few thick dark curls and watching the Sniper's clit grow a darker pink, he can deal with it-- if he imagines the clitoris as that proto-cock, then he can try to frame this new action as something eh could see himself doing. After all, going down on a fully-functioning cock, he'd be paying a fair amount of attention to the balls, giving an occasional teasing touch to the perineum. If he looks at it that way, he can understand it a little better, can imagine that even with the differences in the lay of the land, the sensations are the same he would want to give any lover.

He keeps up a light touch, and watches the signs of mounting arousal with fascination. So unlike any other man, and yet the Sniper remains comfortingly male throughout. Even with the Spy's face buried between his legs, even with his tongue tracing a careful line up the Sniper's labia, right where they start to open under his touch, there is none of that wet, female smell, that odd sweet muskiness the Spy has never been at ease with, only the same sharp smell of the Sniper's sweat, of salt and iron.

He's gotten used to having just four centimetres of length to suck into his mouth, to the semi-firmness and the way his tongue can play around with it. It doesn't offer the same satisfying ache in his jaw as a session with one of the toys does, but it's real.

He does wonder if he would prefer the Sniper with the surgery. It's a question he doesn't know how to answer, without giving the wrong impression. He likes the smell of the Sniper, and the taste and the feel of his skin, and the heat of him-- those are all things that the toys and the hard rubber surrogates can't give. There are things he wants that he knows the Sniper's body as it is will never provide... but the things he needs? The things he needs, he gets. He has never been a man willing to risk losing something he needed for something he merely wanted. He wants to be bent over and fucked and feel skin and heat and the Sniper's hips thrusting into him. He needs to be held once or twice a week and trusted with secrets and allowed to leak out bits and pieces of his own. He wants to have his head held down on a nice hard cock and swallow down the release. He needs to have someone who knows what he is and loves him anyway, and he thinks maybe he needs to love and to care for someone in return.

And he has learned to take more enjoyment than he ever thought he would in the things that they can do, and the pleasure that he does give. It may not be a mouthful, and it's certainly impossible to deep-throat, but he can accept the trade-off, being able to suck at the Sniper and feel him come apart, over and over. For a while, he uses just one hand and his mouth, the other dropping down to press against his own insistent erection. Whether he means to tame or to encourage it, he can't tell himself.

He gets him off twice, just with hands and mouth, before rising shakily to his feet, to let the Sniper return the favor-- or half of it. It doesn't last as long as the Spy would like, with the Sniper running the little bullet-sized vibrator up the underside of his cock before sucking him off, applying it on and off to the base and the tightening sac even as he does.

"You are wicked." The Spy groans, snatching the toy away.

"Yeah."

"So am I." He drops back down to one knee, leaning up to suck at one nipple, thumb circling the Sniper's clit. He holds the vibrator alongside, waiting a long moment before turning it on.

He pulls away from the nipple, and the Sniper gasps at the sudden introduction of air, feeling colder than it used to after the heat of the Spy's mouth. The Spy nuzzles his way across the Sniper's chest, murmuring soft words smeared into incomprehensibility by kisses. The Sniper's heart rate is picking back up, breaths growing ragged and harsh again, and he grins, before laving the other nipple with his tongue.

The Sniper yanks at his mask, pulling him back long enough to get it off, and his hand grips the Spy's hair hard to direct him. The Spy merely moans his approval at the tactic, nipping at everything his mouth is guided to, both hands still hard at work between the Sniper's legs, one holding the toy and the other teasing and stroking. He combs his fingers through the thatch of hair, clearing it away to make his job with the vibe easier, and he brings the Sniper to orgasm twice more before he gives into the protest his knees are making.

"That... that is a new record, yes?" He grins up at the Sniper after, wiping at his chin to clear away his own saliva.

The Sniper fixes his pulled-up undershirt, but he doesn't bother rebuttoning his work shirt. "How long was that?"

"An hour."

"Fuck. Yeah. Really?"

The Spy picks up the Sniper's arm, checking his watch. "An hour. Perhaps a little less."

"Bloody fucking hell." The Sniper sounds awestruck, grinning up at him. "C'mon. Let's drive out to the hotel, you can put your feet up in bed. I'll put some ice on your knees."

"Ha ha."

"Massage?"

"Mm, better."

The Sniper helps fix the Spy's zipper, before they move around to the cab.

"I was thinking about tomorrow night." The Spy says, after they've driven a little while in silence.

"Yeah? Probably for the best, think I'm done in for tonight." The Sniper chuckles. "Nah, what about tomorrow night?"

"There's a nice restaurant in town... I mean, not that the Sugar Pine is not nice, but... well, do you... do you get tired eating two or sometimes three meals there a day every weekend?"

"I'm pretty easy to please. I can always order something different if I get tired of burgers, anyway."

"Right. Of course. But... I mean, 'nice', by the standards out here-- It is not as though there is a strict dress code, so... You could just dress as you always do and we could go see if the place is any good."

"Yeah. Could do." He nods.

"I just thought it would be nice to take each other someplace a little bit... I mean, 'fancy' is not a word I normally ascribe to restaurants that have big wagon wheels hanging in the window, but... For once, you could have a steak instead of a burger."

"What, like a real date?"

"The Sugar Pine is real..." The Spy shook his head. "But this other place is... it is not more 'real' for a date, but I... I would like it more."

He falls quiet again, looking out the window.

"I like steak." The Sniper nods again. "Long as I don't need a tie, you can take me anywhere."

He relaxes, even laughing a little. "I think these weekends that I am there is the only time anyone in that town owns a tie that is not just a leather cord strung through a little brass cow skull."

"Then tomorrow night we can go get a fancy dinner. Hell, maybe before we leave this place for good we'll even try out that little Mexican place out past the museum."

"Maybe." He reaches over and squeezes the Sniper's thigh. "Thank you."

"'S nothing."

"It is something to me." The Spy slumps back into his seat, eyes closing. He rests them for the remainder of the drive.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For once, steak.

Saturday night, they both order steak. The Sniper asks for it 'so rare it's bloody', with the chips and a beer, and the Spy orders his own on the well-done side of medium with the soup and a glass of wine.

Neither the soup nor the wine is what he would have expected, in some of the restaurants he's enjoyed closer to home, but by local standards, both are enjoyable, and it's as easy to relax there as anywhere else in town. The tablecloths aren't long enough to play footsie beneath the table, but they don't attract much attention. The restaurant serves a smattering of local businessmen and farmers and ranchers, in various combinations, and the Spy is relieved not to stand out among families and 'ordinary' couples. He pretends to talk business whenever anyone passes by their table, and that seems to satisfy the waitstaff and their fellow patrons.

For the most part, he holds his tongue until they return to the hotel, but he is glad to have been able to try the place, and he's gladder to see the Sniper enjoy himself.

He's still locking the door of their room, when the Sniper collapses onto the bed with a groan.

"Well, I'm ready to not move for a couple hours." He announces.

"You could have taken a doggy bag."

"Sorry 'bout your romantic evening." The Sniper lets out a belch, giving his belly a pat and the Spy an apologetic look.

"Don't be." He shakes his head and slips out of his shoes, joining the Sniper on the bed. "I don't mind... I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it is not too long before we have our freedom now, is it? And I enjoyed dinner, so, thank you for that."

"Yeah. Good steak. Glad you brought it up."

"Mm."

After a moment, the Spy reaches over to lace his fingers with the Sniper's. There's something just a little wonderful about the idea of being too full and contented after dinner to think about sex, and to not feel cheated by it. He doesn't think he's ready to call the honeymoon phase over, but it's nice to know that when it does end, he'll still enjoy overeating and falling asleep next to the man.

"I could get old and boring with you." He laughs.

"Nah. Never. Old, maybe."

"You are sweet, and if my mouth tasted less like onions, I would kiss you for that."

The Sniper leans over and kisses his cheek. "That do?"

"That will do." He kisses the back of the Sniper's hand in return. "Remind me to brush my teeth, when I feel like standing up again."

"Brush your teeth when you feel like standing up again."

"Ass."

The Sniper chuckles and rolls over to lean against his shoulder, slinging an arm across him. "Yeah, you like that about me."

"But of course. I adore your ass. It is small and it is flat but it is the only ass for me."

They share a laugh, and doze off in their clothes before waking up around midnight to take turns with the bathroom. The Spy trudges back to bed last, still running his tongue over his teeth having brushed them.

"Guess we are a bit old and boring tonight." The Sniper smiles, glancing at the clock. He claims the kiss he'd been promised, pulling back the covers for the other man.

"You don't mind it, either?"

"I don't mind it. Got someone to be boring with, don't I?"

"That..." The Spy snorts. "That, I think, is just about the definition of romance."

"Yeah, make fun."

"No, I mean it, I do. It's all very well to have the flattering and the flirting, but when it is over... I just want someone I can be boring with, don't I?"

The Sniper doesn't say anything to that, but he wraps an arm around the Spy and spoons up to him.

In the morning, he wakes up feeling more apprehensive than frisky-- he'd hoped, after just falling asleep the night before, that Sunday morning would find them both in the mood. Instead, it seems he can't keep the future off his mind. He looks forward to getting out from under the companies' thumbs, for the both of them being free to talk to each other whenever and wherever they liked, instead of worrying about being branded as 'traitors', but he's had so long to be able to put off making real decisions about his life, and so long to put off worrying about seeing his parents again. Having a real deadline on his contract changed that. His life would be changing for the better, of course, but... that didn't mean it would all be easy.

"I think I do want you to meet my folks. I just don't know how to pull it off." He murmurs.

The Spy kisses his shoulder. He'd known when he woke that it wasn't an easy morning, had felt the tension bleeding out of the Sniper. At least now he can follow the line of reasoning behind the unrest.

"We'll figure something out."

"Yeah. Well we can keep saying 'there's time to think of a way' until there isn't, so... 'scuse me for wanting to know how."

"Of course. If you want, you can introduce me first as a friend and not a lover."

"Dunno. I... I want them to know. I just don't want to tell them."

He nods. "They are your parents. If you absolutely cannot decide upon a course of action, then I will step in and be the one to say something, but unless you ask me to, I leave handling it to you."

"Hell... I don't even know what I'm doing with my own self anymore, how can I know what I'm telling them?"

"When the time comes, I really do trust you to know. You have strong instincts. You know yourself, and you know your family, and when push comes to shove you will find the answer you need to find."

"What would you tell them? If we were going there today and I told you I couldn't, what would you tell them?"

"I would tell them I was your good friend." The Spy nods carefully. "And I would let them know that I trusted and cared for you. And I think that I would let them take what I said as they wished to. I do not like to force things, you know... me and subtlety. But if I was asked, I would say that I loved you."

The Sniper nods along with him. He's not sure if that's the approach he would choose to go with, but as the Spy says it, he realizes he couldn't have expected different.

"What about the surgery? What would you have me do with that-- Honest, now. If I was at a real loss when we got there? I know, I know, 'don't ask me', but really, what... what would you want?"

The Spy sighs, eyes closing. "Honestly? Honestly... I want to feel nothing but you when you fuck me. But you have fingers, I could still have your skin against mine, I could still have some living part of you inside me, so... If they could give you the body you truly wanted, I would say of course you should, and if they can't, then I would not. And if you really want to know what would please me? Then... then maybe for just one weekend, I would ask for you to try that temporary graft, just to see, for both of us... I would never expect you to change for me, but if they have the technology for something temporary, then maybe I would ask just for one weekend... You could ask me for anything in return, you know?"

"Yeah?"

"Of course. I don't know what." The Spy shrugs uncomfortably. "It is only fair, though, isn't it? If there is any little procedure I could undergo to give you a weekend of some experience you wanted."

"You don't need anything like that." He shakes his head. "Say I do get just a temporary graft for a weekend while we're in the city... I don't know if I could, I don't know... I don't know how to talk to a doctor about that. They don't make 'em for me, and--"

"Of course. As I said, I have no expectations--"

"Lungs."

"What?"

"It's a bigger deal than a temporary graft, but it's not too different. I told you, yeah? About the technology being developed growing new organs... Well, would you?"

"Get new lungs?"

"Yeah."

The Spy thinks about it. If Australian medical technology could do the kinds of things the Sniper has told him about, then he supposes it must be even better than what the Medic has at his disposal, and if that's the case, then perhaps growing a new set of lungs and having them put into himself wouldn't be such a horrible undertaking.

"Can you smoke?"

"That's the point." The Sniper laughs. "No one would bother getting new lungs if they were just gonna quit."

"Very good. I will get them even if you don't want the surgery." He nods. "And then I will enjoy filling them with smoke. But... Look. If you want counsel on this, I am not the one to give it. I am too invested in you-- not only in your body, but in you, all of you. And I do want things, and I will always be afraid of mis-speaking, or in weighing your wants against my own and putting too much or too little stock where I should. Maybe... maybe if you trust your Medic, you should show him that brochure, and ask him what he thinks of it all. He will have the distance and the professional insight that I lack."

'Professional' wasn't the first word that sprang to the Sniper's mind when he thought about RED's Medic-- then again, even if it wasn't always, by this time 'trustworthy' was. He had been warring with whether or not he could show the Medic, and with the Spy's urging, he thinks it might not be a bad idea.

"You don't have to commit yourself to any course of action, you know." The Spy says, cuddling up to him firmly. "I just think you could get better advice than mine."

"Yeah. Maybe. But... I'm still glad you were honest with me."

"I have never wanted to be dishonest with you." The Spy says, stopping short at the absurdity of it and looking up at the Sniper with a smile. "Imagine me, hating to be dishonest. But... It isn't my decision. I would be very happy if you had a cock. I did not want to make you think that this makes me unhappy with you now."

"Appreciate it."

"I think I am getting pretty good at making love to you, anyway." He grins, allowing a certain amount of swagger into his voice. "The other night, I did very well."

"Yeah."

"I could do as well today, after a cup of coffee. Maybe better, if you are interested in breaking any records?"

The Sniper laughs and shakes his head. He's not sure he feels up to breaking any records... but he's gotten his head back on to the point where he can at least appreciate the offer, even if it's a while before he wants to act on it.


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family

"Doc? Have a minute?"

"A minute? Usually?" The Medic appears from around the corner, carrying an armload of files. "I'll just get rid of these..."

He dumps them into an open cabinet drawer and leaves them un-filed, motioning the Sniper into his office to take a seat.

"Thanks." The Sniper moves the articulated skeleton out of his chair, hanging it back on his hook.

"And-- Sorry, don't mind Fritzie!-- What is on the old mind then?"

"Been thinking about... surgical options, in Australia. Dunno if it's smart-- they've got the tech, but... Well, I mean, here, you'd be interested in this."

He tosses the pamphlet down onto the Medic's desk and watches the man's eyes grow wide-- unlike the Spy's reaction, the Medic's is for the science, and not for the product. He doesn't give the sizing chart a second glance as he looks over the carefully-staged pictures of the hospital's facility.

"And they can grow all sorts of parts like this?"

"Organs, yeah. Skin and muscle's easy enough. Last I was in the country, you couldn't do bone 'cause it kept wanting to grow and it'd develop spurs too easy, but it's not like I keep up on these things anymore. Started with hearts and lungs."

"Oh, how fascinating! The trouble that would have saved me... Ah, but... of course, you are not so interested in hearts and lungs."

"Not in the market for any, for myself, no."

"Well, there is not very much scientific information here, for me to offer an in-depth professional opinion on, but it seems safe and sanitary. Or is it a general apprehension over surgeries? If that is it, I would be more than happy to rummage about in your insides until you are used to it!"

"No-- No thanks, Doc." He holds up a hand. "Nah, my problem's... I mean, hell, look at the smallest size they offer!"

The Medic does, nodding. There is absolutely no shock on his features after making a more thorough inspection of the 13" 'Large'.

"Decent." He says.

"Decent?" The Sniper feels as if he's gone through the looking glass.

"Now that one is pretty big." He taps the 'Saxton Hale' model, and the Sniper sputters. "I suppose."

"They make you sign a waiver to get that one!"

"Pshaw, waivers!"

"I can't walk around with one of those strapped to me!"

"No... No, I suppose not. It's not for everyone."

"Besides... I don't want something that looks... Well, fake. And like everyone's."

He doesn't mention his plans for a hysterectomy-- he'd trust the Medic to be able to remove anything from him and fix him up after, but he's not sure he could be healed without it just coming back. Respawn would put everything right back where it used to be as well. And he just doesn't want to discuss his internal organs with a man who takes so much joy out of playing with them.

The Heavy comes in while he's still dithering over a way to explain his surgery qualms, carrying a chess set under one arm and a tea tray on his other hand, and the Medic's blase attitude towards the size options for permanent grafts clicks into place. He finds he can't meet his teammate's eyes.

"Sorry-- I interrupt!"

"Nah, just, er... just leaving."

"The Sniper was kind enough to smuggle an Australian medical pamphlet out to me, I had mentioned my interest in new surgeries." The Medic covers a little more smoothly, letting him take the pamphlet back. "It really is fascinating technology."

The Heavy nods and sets his little burdens down on the desk, uninterested. Clearly, the Sniper decides, he hears enough about surgery.

It wasn't as helpful as he'd hoped, and he wonders why he thought it would be. Not as though he ever expected Medic to hold all the answers...

He looks over the pamphlet again himself, once he's alone in his camper with the door locked and shades drawn.

There was almost no space devoted to the fact that customization was available... did it mean that he could get something more in-scale to the rest of him? Something that was his and his alone, completely unremarkable? The kind of thing no one would expect was grown in a vat?

Even if it did... would it be safe to get it done? He wasn't going in with a mangled blank where he'd once had male genitals, he was going in... he was going in as a man with a vagina, and that was something he couldn't expect the doctors back home to understand. For that matter, would it even be safe to get the work he needed done? To expose that part of himself to scrutiny, even to get it removed, it meant at least a small surgical team and whoever handled hospital paperwork knowing, and he couldn't pass for a masculine woman anymore...

There's a soft but urgent rapping at his door, breaking him out of his increasingly hopeless reverie, and he's surprised to see the Spy appear when he opens the door. He pulls the man in, even more surprised to see how shaky he is.

"We agreed not 'til Wedn-- Spook? Hey, what's the matter?" He locks the door again, quickly, before taking the Spy in his arms.

"Anamarie." He exhales the name, clinging to the Sniper's shirt and resting his forehead on one shoulder.

The Sniper rubs his back, long sure strokes, and waits a moment before asking. "Who?"

"Anamarie, my cousin, I thought-- Twenty five years I thought she was dead. I got a letter. She discovered me again, through the real estate agent I had been phoning on weekends, to try and find a home to retire to-- her, her husband works in the office, he does the paperwork there, my baby cousin, she has a husband!"

He hugs the Sniper hard, grinning wide.

"That's-- Good, that's good." He kisses the Spy's temple and holds him another long moment, mind taken off his own troubles. If the Spy has had a miracle, then maybe he'll get his own. And maybe, even if he doesn't, it won't matter so much. "I'm glad you've got family."

"I thought she was dead. She was a child then... her mother was one of the few relatives who did not disown mine. And then that whole side of the family was gone." He shakes his head, drawing in deep breaths. "All this time if I knew one thing it was that I was alone. Now I have family."

He pulls the letter out of his pocket to show, and the Sniper can hardly read a word, though the handwriting is neat, but he lets the Spy recount it in his own time, and picks out the words he can.

There's a recent photograph folded up in it that the Spy beams over, of a woman in a big straw sunhat with a tiny baby in her arms.

"This is Michel." He holds it up, pride and reverence written plainly on a face used to hiding everything. "My nephew. For simplicity's sake, let us just say 'nephew'."

"He's cute."

"She... She won't mind you, I hope. Oh, no, she can't... after everything, she cannot. I am the only blood relative she has-- except for the baby-- and... Well, you know better than I do, don't you? I just need for her to like you. I want to be in their lives... Look at him, he's so small... don't you think he needs uncles?"

Uncles.

The Sniper nods, wrapping his arms back around the Spy.

He still wanted his parents to accept him as he was, desperately. He wanted them to accept the Spy as well, but he didn't really expect them to-- not both. He didn't dare hope for so much from them, but maybe the Spy's cousin could, if they couldn't. Maybe there could be someone out there in the world who would be all right with them.

"I think I want the surgery." He mumbles, lips pressed against the side of the Spy's head. "Don't get excited, 'cause I still don't think I can."

"If you want it, then--"

"It's not simple, Spy."

"I am not saying it is simple. I am saying if I need to blackmail a doctor into doing it for you and saying nothing--"

"It's a team of doctors, it's not just the surgeon, it's the bloke gassing me up, it's the nurses, it's everyone involved in growing the thing before it's grafted on and everyone who sees my paperwork."

"I can get to the whole hospital if you need me to. Everyone has secrets. And people who don't have secrets have loved ones. And if there is a man in that place who has neither, even you Australians are not bulletproof. If you decide that this will make you more comfortable then I am with you and I will do what it takes."

"I don't need it. I think I want it, but if I can't do it, I don't need it. I never would have, if it didn't exist, you know? I mean... I always kind of thought I ought to have one, when I was a kid, but I wasn't stuck on it. And I'm not stuck on it now... just. I'd never have to worry about being found out, if I had one. It'd make things easier. No more creams, no more funnels. I mean, even so..."

"Is it not more than a mere convenience to you?"

"Course it is. But I'll live, yeah? I mean... wouldn't be able to go four times in a night with one, probably. Not four times in an hour for damn sure. I just... We're starting a life someplace I've never been, with people who've never met me. And if I started it with a cock, then that's all people will ever know. I want that."

"Cher, they're not going to see you naked. No matter what you do or don't do, everyone that I introduce you to will know you as a man, and no one will think there is any need to question it. If you want one for you, I will make certain it is safe for you to have the work done. But do not start worrying about what the world thinks now, that is not you."

"... Thanks."

"De rien."

"Retirement's got me on edge, reckon."

"Ah. Well... enjoy the last of your contract, then, while you have it. And when it is up, I will help you enjoy your retirement, no worrying."

"A little worrying. There's still my parents to deal with."

"A little worrying." The Spy allows. "But you know yourself, mon beau, and I know you. The rest... the rest we will handle."


	21. Chapter Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Free men

They start driving their first night as free men. It isn't until midnight that they get a real move on, both of them kept late at their own bases signing papers, promising their silence to the companies in return for hefty sums of money and halfhearted words of thanks for their years of service.

The BLU team has stayed up-- the Spy told them that he wouldn't be sticking around for one last drink, but that he would not mind one last round of handshakes, and most of them have gathered around out of curiosity. He didn't leave with the emissary who took his final paperwork back to BLU, but he'd made it clear he wouldn't be there in the morning.

They watch, from windows and open doorways, as he crosses the field, drops his suitcases next to the RED Sniper's battered camper, and shakes the man's hand as if it's a lifeline, the two patting each other's shoulders warmly before the Sniper stows the Spy's things in the back, and they both climb into the cab of the truck, and they don't understand it at all.

They stop in town, and wake the young man holding the desk down at the hotel. The Spy exchanges a couple of friendly words about the graveyard shift while he picks up their room key, and then they lock themselves in.

"Last night here." The Sniper pats the bed, watching the Spy's long-familiar security routine.

"Oh, and you care to make it a memorable one?"

"Maybe a memorable last morning. Tomorrow... Tomorrow, one last go on the town?"

"We could certainly get it all done in a day, but then when would we drive?"

"Make tomorrow our last night in town? Drive Sunday?"

The Spy nods, stripping down to his underthings and grabbing his toothbrush. The Sniper gives him the first turn at the sink, pulling back the covers as he gets off the bed and heads for the bathroom, and stealing a brief kiss in passing.

"Could fly out of Albuquerque... be a stopover maybe in Hawaii, but we'd get there." He calls, turning to talk over his shoulder.

The Spy makes a face and the Sniper sighs, rolling his eyes.

"Problem with Albuquerque?"

"If we drive out to the coast, we can just fly straight there. I am not making a stopover in the tropics-- instead of enjoying the sights, all we will experience is the humidity and the airport. Besides... Albuquerque sounds dreary. This town... this town is all right, because it is ours, you know? But I have no love of the American southwest on the whole. And... it seems more like saying farewell to a country if your last sight of it is the sea."

"Gonna be the last you see of it from the air, either way. But fine. Wouldn't mind it... give me more time that way." He finishes up with the bathroom, before coming back out and joining the Spy in bed. "I mean... gonna have to sell the old girl, ain't I? Pack everything up and say goodbye to her, camper and all."

"I hadn't thought of that." The Spy frowns. "I will help you pack."

"Could get seventy five bucks for her, reckon. She runs, and she'll be cleaned up a bit when I sell her off-- for both, you think? Seventy five? Hell, that's my flight back to Oz. Have to clean me up for that." He rolls his eyes again, shaking his head. "Think you can promise not to laugh."

"I could promise not to laugh." The Spy grins, sly, rolling himself into the Sniper's arms. "You own a suit?"

"Had to buy one. For flying, and I wore it once or twice for meeting clients, back when I was freelancing. Feels too stuffy for me and I don't look good as you do. And I hate the way I look with a clean shave. But I guess I don't mind having shoulders."

The Spy laughs. "That is a definite part of the appeal. You have seen what I look with and without."

"Like you without."

"Mm. Not too skinny?"

"Next to me reckon you look just fine. Gotta admit, I like having a couple pounds of muscle on ya."

"Oh? For pinning me down and having your way with me?" He teases, before a yawn stops him. "Oh... oh, I suppose I have been wearing myself out on paperwork."

"Same." He yawns as well. The hour on the road hadn't helped his case any, but he liked staying up to talk. Considering the change they had ahead of them, it wasn't as though he'd been able to get to sleep without it. "Hey... we'll be right. Yeah?"

"We will be. One more night here, and then we'll drive to San Francisco. Pack up... sell your van... make love in a very nice hotel... fly to Australia..." The Spy trails off sleepily.

The Sniper is up a little longer. There are so many things he's not sure he's ready to face once they get there. He can get rid of the truck, and the camper, though he's not happy about it. It's too much trouble to move them from the US to Oz and then to France, he's got better things to do with his money and his effort-- cheaper to sell it and buy something else than to ferry it twice, with that kind of distance. He doesn't think he'll have any trouble buying some used junker once they have a place to call home, and they can afford to rent something for a little while, to visit his parents.

He's not ready to think about visiting his parents. He's gone through so many changes since he saw them last... he's barely spoken to his mother on the phone since telling them, he hasn't heard his father's voice at all... the last thing he'd heard his father say was 'everyone knows we have a daughter'.

He holds onto the Spy hard and tries to push it out of his mind, but it's a long time before he does, and it's late when he wakes up.

The Spy is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking fresh and awake and clean, smile bright.

"You've got no idea how glad I am to see you." The Sniper shakes his head, voice hoarse.

"Maybe a little idea." He strokes the Sniper's cheek with a firm hand, and there's a warmth that comes over him that's visible, as he occupies himself with feeling the rasp of his lover's stubble and the planes of his face. "Brunch at the Sugar Pine? If we hurry they will still be serving waffles, I do not know if you care about waffles... And tonight we can even try that little Mexican place if you like, I don't need steak again."

"Would like waffles. And Mexican for tonight. Thanks."

He sits and stretches, aware of the Spy's admiring gaze when he twists to both sides. He smiles at the brush of fingers along his ribcage.

"Got a clean shirt, could shower after brunch. To get there in time." He rolls out of bed, stopping in the bathroom for a quick piss and a very perfunctory wash-up at the sink, before pulling on an old denim work-shirt. It had been in the back of his tiny closet for years, the one thing RED wouldn't let him wear even on his weekends...

The Spy doesn't mention it, though he lets the Sniper catch him looking, and he does not try to hide being affected by it.

"Brings out your eyes." He says, off-hand, during the short drive. It's all he says about the shirt, but the Sniper figures that's for the best.

He looks better than he ever has, with no mask and no gloves, and the sleeves of his crisp white shirt rolled up. There are clear tan lines on his face, and his forearms and hands look so pale, the kind of pale the Sniper has let himself believe only existed in their bed, it's so strange to see him out in the sun.

"That much skin's gonna give me ideas." He teases, parking the truck.

"If you want to have ideas about my forearms, cher, you are welcome to them." The Spy laughs.

"Your hands?"

"Oh... Oh, you go ahead and have ideas about those." He smiles a little, head ducking down-- not to hide a blush, but to give himself a moment to hold onto the thought, the implicit come-on, the new freedom. A moment to take it all, savor it just a little, and put it away until they were alone again.

The dark grey trousers hug the Spy when he moves, something that's so much easier to notice when there's no blazer in the way, and the Sniper walks behind him as they head inside, glad he's the only one with sunglasses-- he suspects they'd be dawdling to try and get the best looks at each other if the Spy had the same freedom to let his eyes wander in public.

The waffles are good-- as is what he steals of the Spy's omelet. The coffee, of course, always better than at the base. He can't wait to take the Spy for coffee in Australia. It's the one thing he can look forward to with no qualms. Even if he can't find a way to get the surgery he really wants, even if he can't get through a day with his parents, they can get a really good coffee. If that has to be worth the trip, then he promises himself it will be.

They walk around the outside of the museum again after brunch, the Spy's hand gripping his elbow as they pass the big stamp mill.

"I promise I won't climb it." He grins, taking the opportunity to lead the Spy down a hill to where the general store sits. He picks up a little food and bottled water for the drive and the Spy fails to find his brand of cigarette, and they pass by the laundromat and stop into the bakery, barely big enough for them both to stand at the counter.

By the time they get to the little Mexican hole-in-the-wall, the Spy feels like he really has seen the whole town. He has eaten in Spain, and he's had the Engineer's cooking, which sometimes veered into the 'tex-mex' territory, and this is different from both, but it is not wholly alien. When his dinner proves spicy, he follows it with the chips sitting on their table, while the Sniper washes his own down with a couple of beers.

It's not bad, even with the heat. He doesn't try any of the Sniper's-- the meat was unspecified on the menu, which he never takes as an encouraging sign-- but he offers a bite of the relleno when no one is looking their way, and loves the way the Sniper moans in pleasure at the taste of it.

Back in their room, they lean over the sink together and brush their teeth before squeezing into the same bath. They trade a couple of handjobs, and laugh around too many kisses to count, and when they hit the bed at last, the Spy gets the Sniper off again before pulling the covers up over them both.

"Told you I'd have ideas about those hands." The Sniper sighs.

"Never stop having ideas about them."

"Sleep tight." He drops a kiss to the top of the Spy's head. "Driving tomorrow. 'S sixteen... seventeen hours 'r so. Gonna wake you early."

"Mon grand, I look forward to it." Spy yawns, rolling over to press his back into the Sniper, reaching back to pull an arm around himself.

The Sniper, never one to miss such a clear invitation, spoons up behind him. It's easier to sleep than the night before had been, and before he knows it, he's waking in the morning.

"Got some good memories of this place." He says, nudging the Spy awake. "But I think I'm ready to say goodbye."

"Well..." The Spy rolls over, stretching his back out. "We have a future to get to, I suppose."

"Yeah. S'pose so."

They linger more than the Sniper intends to, packing up and getting ready in the morning. It's too much to keep their hands to themselves, and he lets the Spy's confidence rub off on him as they set off. There's nothing worrying will accomplish before they get there, after all...


	22. Chapter Twenty One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> San Francisco to Adelaide

In San Francisco, the Spy takes him to a restaurant overlooking the bay. The tablecloth is real and heavy, and reaches the floor, and even in his one suit, the Sniper feels out of place there, but the way the Spy lights up is worth it before he even tastes the food.

The Spy is in his element, dressed well and all but seducing their waitress over the wine list, though when she isn't looking, he winks at the Sniper.

"Leading the poor girl on." He whispers, shaking his head.

The Spy shrugs. The message is clear enough-- it helps their case, after all, for the Spy to play lothario with any woman who happens to pass near enough. It's not as though the Sniper suffers a moment of doubt over it. He's had the Spy's fingers in his own vagina, and that's proof enough for him that the other man isn't after any more intimate contact with something similar.

The Spy frowns a bit over the wine list after the waitress leaves them to make their choice, before offering it to the Sniper.

"They are all reasonably local and four years old or younger, so if you have any preferences..."

"Such a snob." He grins, shaking his head. "Sure the cheapest cab sav on there'd make me happy. Nice selection on the dinner menu, for seafood. Don't trust much when I can't see the ocean. Stuff out of a can's safe, but beyond that... can't eat seafood out in the desert. What do you like?"

"I haven't looked yet."

"Aw, fresh oysters..."

The Spy looks up, going a bit green. "I am afraid I put very little stock in the reputation of oysters to have a positive effect on me."

"Mussels?"

"I... You order what you like. No shellfish for me. Sole, maybe-- Oh, definitely sole."

"'Right." The Sniper nods, perusing the menu a little more. He doesn't know how strong the Spy's objection to shellfish is-- if he doesn't like the taste or the texture, or if seeing anything whole on the half-shell would put him off, or if it's an allergy he doesn't care to draw attention to. On the off chance that it is an allergy, he lets the opportunity for fresh cioppino pass. The rainbow trout looks fine.

It is fine, when it comes, and the wine is as good as anything he's ever had. Not quite the same as back home, and not quite the same as anything he'd sampled throughout Europe, but certainly no worse. The Spy's sole is better, when a little bit is passed to him on a bread plate.

"Bloody hell, I should've ordered this." He sighs, eyes rolling back.

"More capers than I would have used, but still... isn't it?" The Spy nods. His attention drifts back and forth between the meal, resting on his entree, on his wine, out the window on the sea, and then, coming back to burn into the Sniper. He never rests for long-- too long, the Sniper figures, and they would both want to do something about it.

After dinner, the Spy orders espressos, laying the charm on thick with their waitress and slipping out of one shoe to caress the Sniper's calf beneath the table.

"She likes being flattered by a charming man because the tips are usually good with the charmers." He whispers, when she's out of earshot. "Between the two of us, though, I am not the man she has been looking at the longest."

"G'wan."

"Mm. She makes eye contact because I engage her first. When she is over there at the bar with the other servers, she glances back at you."

"It's the suit. Gives me shoulders." He shrugs it off, shaking his head.

"Mm-hm. Maybe. I'll have to tip enough to make up for her heartache when I am the one who goes home with you." The Spy chuckles. He only laughs harder when the Sniper kicks him lightly under the table. "The service has been prompt and reliable, she deserves it. Personally, I hate it-- it took me too long to get in the habit, I am used to having the gratuities added up for me on the bill."

"Yeah? You always trust the staff to mark you up what they're worth?"

"To me it is worth it not to have to do all the fiddly math on a full stomach, after half a bottle of good wine. What if we took the tiramisu back to the hotel?"

"What if I already have something back at the hotel?" He keeps his voice low, nervous, but there's no one near their table, and the Spy raises one eyebrow, leaning back in his chair with a smile.

"I leave the matter in your capable hands, then." He takes a sip of his espresso, holding the Sniper's gaze through a long, slow blink.

The hotel they're staying at is nice-- extravagantly so. The Sniper had said he'd be fine staying at the motor lodge up the street, and the Spy has yet to explain what he found so hilarious about that.

They have to park at the corner, and they walk past the place to get to their hotel, and the Sniper understands. From the sound of the place, it is not conducive to quiet relaxation. More to drinking and socializing... The Spy nudges him and points out an open door.

"That's where you wanted to stay."

"Well... seemed cheap and easy."

"The very definition of it." He laughs. "And of the clientele."

There's a boy out on a stoop who's been looking towards the place, rubbing sweaty palms on dirty jeans, and when they pass by, he gives them a quick glance, with the wide-eyed look of a dog who knows it's done something wrong.

The Spy chuckles, beckoning to him as he breaks away from the Sniper, and whispering a few words.

"He was going to go anyway." He says, looping his arm through the Sniper's.

"Yeah. Pretty familiar with that look."

"I told him to leave his wallet at home first and put a condom in his pocket. Not to drink everything he's handed. I don't know if it will stop him, on the drinking side, but he won't get robbed at least. He's been watching the place days now, if I'm any judge."

"Are you? Any judge?"

The Spy nods. "For me, I was not afraid to walk in-- the queer nightspots when I was growing up were respectable enough, compared to other places. Coffee shops and bars full of self-proclaimed artists, generally. But it felt like a long time, before I took any real advantage of them. It was enough at first to have them exist. I could breathe inside these places... Well, as much as I could ever breathe, out. It was one less mask to wear. I know what young boys look like when they are itching to taste something that has been forbidden them, by outside forces or in."

"Would've given anything for there to be an honest place for it." The Sniper sighs. He's not at ease with walking down the street arm in arm, but he trusts the Spy-- he knows the other man wouldn't do it if they weren't passing through the one spot where it was safe to. The Spy is the only other man he knows who understands caution the way he does, a bone-deep need, a razor's edge between mastering a fear and being a slave to it.

"Tell me about you, then. Where could you go?"

"Inside." He shakes his head.

The Spy releases his arm a little farther up the street, and they walk a foot apart until a crowd outside a bar forces them back together. Not, he gathers, like the bars nearer the motor lodge.

They don't say anything else until they reach the room, and the Sniper strips down to his underthings and rests on the bed while the Spy secures the place.

"I loved smelling the ocean, today." He says lightly, finishing up his routine and loosening his tie. He drops his jacket onto a chair, his waistcoat. "And dinner... was the trout good?"

"Was. Wish it had been with that sauce--"

"The beurre blanc. Yes. Some time I'll make one, it isn't hard, sauces. What about you, what do you do in the kitchen?"

"Not much. Love barbecuing, though."

"All right. You grill the meat and I will make the sauces, and we'll get along just fine." He drops onto the bed. "Tell me about where you used to go."

"Anywhere you could buy a drink, if it wasn't too crowded." The Sniper shrugs. "Never expecting to meet blokes, of course. I-- I couldn't."

He leaves that right where it is, and the Spy doesn't push. "You wound up meeting a couple, before me. That's good. I adore the thought of being the last man to have you, but I would hate to be greedy with you, cher. It is poor taste to begrudge a man his wild oats, isn't it?"

"Dunno. Found places easier when I left Oz. Never... never easy. Never knew how to ask about it. Scared to death I'd get caught if I tried coming onto a bloke. Even when I looked like a girl I was. Y'know... didn't want-- didn't want someone coming home with me thinking things were-- Anyway. Guess I got the experiences I needed, and that's all that really matters. If there's experiences I haven't had yet, then either I don't need 'em, or you're there to give 'em to me, so... yeah."

"And what experience am I giving you tonight?"

"Giving you one, actually." He feels his face heat.

It had been the slow work of many evenings without the Spy, turning a couple of old belts and some assorted scrap into the harness, and then knitting a lining for it to keep old worn edges from biting into his skin anyplace delicate. When he pulls it out, he's struck anew by how ridiculous it looks, but with the cock fitted into it, it's at least clear what the function is.

The Spy looks up at him with an almost tentative delight, surprised and unsure.

The hard rubber cock is nothing new in and of itself. It's the one he's fucked the Spy with before, just holding it in his hand. A little bit larger than the one he had settled on, the one the Spy still sometimes sucked on while playing with him. A little bit larger than what he felt right with. It fit his hand, but not as easily as the other one... and it was knowing that this would have felt a little too big that made him sure the standard grafts would be unbearable to live with.

"For me?" The Spy kisses him softly. "Mon grand, you shouldn't have... now I am going to keep you in bed past checkout. We might even miss our flight."

He laughs and grabs the Spy for a longer kiss, fumbling to get his shirt unbuttoned and off as fast as he can.

Once they're undressed-- and once he is outfitted-- it's strange, looking down and seeing it aimed out, the base resting firm and flush over his pubic bone, no hands keeping it in place. It's not quite like looking down and seeing a real one, the harness 'cozy' is knit from multi-coloured scrap yarn and somewhat spoils the illusion, but he doesn't mind that.

With the condom and the petroleum jelly, he can no longer see the glaring difference between the firm rubber and the colour his skin should have been, and once he's sinking it into the Spy, all he can think about is the way it looks, his hands firm on the pale, slim hips... there is an old bullet scar at the edge of his hand, a more recent mark up a centimeter from his thumb. The Spy's shoulders are an haute relief, his arms folded and his head dropped down, and the arch of his spine a series of bumps and dips in the hard shadow of the bedside lamp.

He remembers the tight heat of the Spy around his fingers when he'd prepped him for it, imagines how good that would feel if this was just a little more real, that kind of perfect even pressure, that slickness and fire... His mouth will do, or even his hand, or even just the weight of his gaze.

He thinks he could settle for that with no regrets. He wants to fuck the Spy hard enough to wear him out, wants to scratch that itch for him 'til he can't see straight. If that means finishing himself off after, he won't be sore over it, not as long as the Spy is watching.

The Spy has to angle his hips, has to keep them lined up, but once the Sniper finds a rhythm that works, he's happy to let him carry on-- more than happy. He's ecstatic. He had considered shopping around, in the more discreet leather goods stores, in the right neighbourhoods of the city. It never occurred to him that the Sniper would not only beat him to the punch, but have built his own.

It seems only right, at that. The Sniper has a full collection of things he's bought, and the Spy would no longer be surprised to see him know his way around a sex shop, but this was clearly something he'd started work on when they'd been meeting on weekends and stolen evenings, between the bases. And while the toys, the fancy Australian high-tech ones in particular, were one thing-- something that needed buying-- the Sniper did have a certain self-sufficiency. It made sense that he would want to fix this up himself, when the Spy thought about it, in the fleeting moments when the Spy could think about it.

He doesn't even mind feeling the straps when the Sniper's hips snap into his, not when it means feeling the weight behind each thrust, a little real contact, hairy thighs against his own and the Sniper's front curling over his back. He's fucked out by the time the Sniper stops, so far beyond his own orgasm, slumped in the wet spot and gasping out a name only he knows, not even the one that had been whispered to him, but its french form.

"Fucking chafes after a bit..." The Sniper laughs weakly, pulling the cock out in as smooth a movement as he can, one thumb wiping up a smear of Vaseline. "Gonna take this off."

"Mm." The Spy rolls onto his side, smiling up with glassy eyes. "Incroyable, tigre. Merveilleux."

"Good." He grins, getting the harness off and tossing it to the floor. With the condom, the toy itself will be clean when he needs to pack it. If he needs to, he can throw the harness' lining in the wash with his socks.

He doesn't bother with looking for another toy, knowing he's left the bag too far from the bed, just makes sure he has the Spy's full attention before he starts tugging and rubbing at his clit with one hand, and a nipple with the other. The Spy groans, and though he doesn't know the words, he understands the meaning clear enough, and the hand that creeps up his thigh in spite of the Spy's exhaustion.

He spits onto a couple of tissues from the nightstand to clean up, taking care of both of them, pulling his undershirt back down when the chill is too much.

The Spy protests moving, but he finally gets them both under the covers where it's not so frigid. It's been years, and his body still feels like it should be summer... he wonders if it ever won't. Maybe all that time in the American desert has helped, where aside from the changing night sky and one brief rain, there were no real seasons to speak of.

He'll enjoy that about going back to Oz, too, he decides. The warmth. The Spy will complain-- it'll be a shock after the foggy January chill in San Francisco, too much like what he wanted to get away from when they left the desert. Still, not like he plans on taking him up into the outback...

No. Just to his parents'...

So much for forgetting that for the night.

He sells the truck and camper both in the morning, to the nearest used car lot to the airport. It's still quite a cab ride, but he doesn't mind it. The worst part of the whole thing is getting all his luggage checked, and then they're on the plane, and the air hostess is giving him the eye.

"You're the smooth talker, how'd I become the-- What are they looking at me for?" He hisses.

"The animal magnetism." The Spy sighs, eyes closing. "I don't know how they put up with this job, it seems like getting paid to have your ass pinched and fondled by men in cheap suits."

"Yeah? I'd do it for free." He jokes. He thinks it's safe to-- anyone overhearing him will only think he means pinching the girls.

"My suit cost more than my plane ticket." The Spy grumbles, before pausing to look the Sniper over. "... Me also, come to think of it. You clean up all right in a cheap suit, you know?"

"We'd get kicked off the damn plane for being a public nuisance." He decides, accepting a pillow and blanket. "Wake me when the drink cart comes around, yeah?"

"But certainly. Wine, beer, cocktail?"

"Beer. Chicken, if there's an option, for supper. Ah, just wake me."

The Spy leans back a little in his own seat. He has the window, but with the Sniper dozing, he can't look out it. He keeps his gaze on the aisle, alert.

No danger comes, of course. He finishes a cigarette before the drink cart comes by, drops the butt into the ashtray hidden in his armrest. There is one family, a couple in too-loud shirts and a boy of ten or so between them, but all the other travelers are businessmen.

In the end, most of the businessmen stay on board, to go on to Japan, when they finally deplane late that night, and the Spy can hardly believe the terminal when they do.

"What--?" He stops, pointing at a screen with the up-to-date flight information. There's one at every gate, and he thinks it's his vision for a long moment.

"Easier than making everyone go up to the board at the front, yeah?" The Sniper shrugs.

There seem to be miles of clean white plastic and chrome accents. It's like stepping off the plane and into an elegantly designed future, except that nearly everyone around them wears denim cutoffs, Hawaiian shirts, and hiking boots. Most of them carry small white Dictaphones-- at least, that was his first thought, until he sees that they have screens just as thin as the displays at the gates, and he hears a voice coming out of one.

"Mobile." The Sniper explains.

"Mobile...?"

"Phone."

"N-no. No. I have seen a mobile phone. It is... it is like-- this, with buttons, but--"

"That brick Miss Pauling's got? Thing's older'n I am." He snorts. "Best thing you can leave the country with, course. Come on, gotta get you cleared to get in."

The Spy nods, fishing out his passport, but when they reach the desk and the man asks if he's a foreigner, the Sniper just asks him if he wants to fight about it and they're being let through with a hearty slap on the back.

"Formality." He shrugs, shaking his head as though it's all some silly little thing, and not completely insane.

"But--"

"Yeah, not necessary, mate." The man waves his passport off.

"Ah, just stamp it." The Sniper passes it between them, and it gets stamped.

The baggage carousel announces things in a soothing voice that sounds less-- or more-- than human, and the cart that the Sniper brings over to load their belongings onto hovers.

"There... are no wheels on that."

"Spook, after teleporters and respawn and all of that, this is weird?"

"It's a bit much all together."

"Well... Look. Countryside'll be better, right? I promise, people just keep using things 'til they don't work anymore out there, nothing bright and new."

The Spy nods, following him out and hailing a cab-- the cab, he is a little relieved and a little disappointed to note, has wheels.

The hotel suite is practically a small apartment, the Spy is disoriented by the sunlight coming through the big windows.

"What time is it?"

"Three in the afternoon tomorrow." He laughs. "You've done this before."

"Never this far."

"Go on and have a lie down, join you in a minute."

The Spy pulls the blinds in the bedroom and closes the curtains tight over them, before getting ready for bed. Everything is clean and white, there and in the adjoining bath, and if being in the future didn't give him such a headache, he thinks he'd enjoy it more. Not just the time difference-- it's true, he's traveled most of the world-- but the future of it all, the little mobile phones with tiny television screens in them, and the hovering luggage carts, and the computer voices.

The Sniper takes a long moment in the suite's sitting room, to look out at the city. He's never loved the cities like he has the wilderness, but a part of him still feels like it's good to be this close to home. Terrifying, for all the reasons he doesn't want to think about yet, but good, and if it hasn't changed too much, then he'll be able to show the Spy a decent time. He hopes some of the restaurants are the same as they were, but it's been a long time since he's seen Adelaide.


	23. Chapter Twenty Two

"Thank you. For waiting to do this together." The Spy whispers, when he wakes up feeling adjusted to the local time at last.

"Yeah? What else was I going to do?"

"You know... I mean, you stuck around an extra month after your contract was up, for mine."

"Half a month. Anyway, wanted this bad as you-- worse. This part, I mean."

The Spy nods, walking his fingers along the Sniper's ribcage for a long, quiet moment before he's gently shoved away.

"Coffee." The Sniper grunts, rolling out of bed. He doesn't move as fast as he could, not with the Spy moving to sprawl out in the center of the bed, half-tangled in the bedsheet as he stretches out under the ceiling fan. "Sweetheart, you are a sight..."

"Coffee?"

"I'm going, I'm going. Lazy."

"Retired." The Spy purrs. "I can afford to be."

He isn't lazy long. After breakfast-- and after tangling himself around the Sniper in the big-enough-for-two shower a while-- he heads down to the business center in the lobby.

It's a nightmare to navigate. He expects a bank of payphones, but instead there are several small shelves between waist and chest-high lining one wall, each with several strange-looking outlets, and one machine that he first mistakes for an automatic teller machine, except that it has a full keyboard, and instead of withdrawing cash, the man who slides a card into it does nothing but type, eyes on the screen.

Finally, he finds the phone booth, and both the payphone itself and the phone book chained to a shelf are slightly dusty with neglect.

He uses a false name and an American accent to call the first hospital in the book. They can't offer the kind of customization he's looking for, but the second can.

"Can this surgery be performed on someone who doesn't have-- I mean, who hasn't had-- Can you do a permanent graft onto a person with a vagina? I... I am calling for a friend."

There's a brief silence on the other end of the line, and then a different voice is apologizing for his wait.

"Sure we can." The doctor assures him, once he's promised he hasn't been waiting long.

"You sound comfortable with the request..."

"Oh, doesn't bother me! Done a few. Hell, shouldn't be surprised, right? I mean, I'd think anyone'd pick being a man if you had the choice."

"And you would be able to remove all the-- the... original parts? This is no problem?"

"Shouldn't be, nah. You're free to bring your friend 'round, you ask for Doctor Patterson and they'll make you an appointment to get sorted."

"Thank you." He grips the phone hard and doesn't hear anything else that's said on the other end.

When he gets up to the suite, the Sniper is staring out at the city again.

"Thinking about places I ought to take you." He smiles. "Could go to the zoo, or the big botanical garden... I mean, dunno if either of those interests you, but you ought to see something."

"Royal Adelaide Hospital." The Spy leans against the door.

"Y'all right?"

"I talked to a man on the telephone downstairs, he said he's done permanent grafts before, for people in your situation-- don't worry, I didn't use any names. I didn't even use my own voice. They do custom work and he'll take care of the hysterectomy. If this is what you want, you can have it."

The Sniper sits down hard, and the Spy moves to his side, curling up in his lap and stroking his arm.

"What, he'd just... just do it?"

"He talked about it like it was not a problem for him at all. And the receptionist who put him on for me said they can do them to your specifications-- whatever those are. She said that there are some accident victims who would rather have exact replicas than standard models. Not many, but for those who do, it's the place..."

"I dunno." He sighs, shaking his head. "It's... it's worth looking into, isn't it, then? Thanks. I-- Thanks."

"If it makes it easier... you know?" The Spy shrugs, lifting himself up for a quick peck on the cheek. "Maybe you know exactly who you are without it, but if it will make it easier for your parents to understand, then--?"

"Dunno if it would. Temporary grafts are a dime a dozen in the big smokes, having a cock doesn't mean they have to take me serious. Not that I'd be whipping it out at the dinner table or-- But hell, I dunno... maybe just knowing it's there'd make it easier to handle them. Hospital's by the zoo and the garden, if I'm remembering it right. Maybe... maybe I'll go down just to talk about it, meet up with you someplace fun?"

The Spy nods slowly. He would like to be there with the Sniper for... well, for anything. He understands why he can't be. There's only so much a 'friend' can do without being suspect, even if he lied and said he was a relative, he couldn't really be there... If the Sniper was actually having work done, he could hang around the waiting room, but for this...

"Meet me at the zoo after, then?"

The Sniper nods, tugging the Spy back down into his lap for a moment longer.

He feels better for it. He doesn't know if he would get the same amount of comfort out of being held, as he gets from holding the Spy and feeling him relax... it's helped in the past, but it isn't the same. When he's not sure how much control he has over his own life and the Spy rests in his arms, he can at least feel like he has all the strength necessary to protect the man, and if he can feel strong enough to care for someone else, then he has to reason he's strong enough to handle himself. The Spy doesn't trust easy, and he trusts the Sniper. Sometimes that's enough to make things look at least a little more all right, knowing the Spy believes in him.

They part in front of the botanical garden, with a handshake that has to stand in for everything else. From there, the Spy goes to the zoo, and the Sniper goes into the hospital with the notes the Spy has written out for him.

Doctor Patterson is about his own age, with a thick moustache and dark blond hair, and a wide, easy smile. He looks as trustworthy as any doctor the Sniper's ever met-- the Medic, after all, took years to earn his trust, and Patterson looks far less mad.

"Asked my... erm, my cousin to call-- phone died on me, so..." He fidgets on the table. "About the surgery."

"Right." Patterson hands him a brochure, newer and more informational than the one he'd been holding onto for so many years, the one he'd picked up up north before leaving the country. "You probably feel like your situation's a pretty... odd one. And it's rare, but nothing new under the sun, yeah?"

"Uh... yeah."

"See, with an adult, it's easy enough to get the permanent graft done regardless of what you're starting out with, but it's next to impossible on an infant, so for... well, probably as long as kids have been born in hospitals, if one's born with both sets, the doctors can only really fix it in one direction. They usually do it without telling the parents, if they can-- that's been my experience, in talking to colleagues who deliver babies. Do the easy fix and pray for the best. And every so often the kid grows up knowing something's missing, even if his parents never even know."

The Sniper nods, feeling his stomach turn over. It's still not him... but he doesn't think he can say as much.

He'd been a home birth. His parents had driven out to the hospital a few times, when his mother was pregnant, and once when they thought she was going into labor, but when he'd been born, he'd surprised them with it. The midwife had barely gotten out to the station in time to meet them, when his father called. The way his mother told the story, the old man had done most of the delivery himself. 'Just like with the lambs', she'd said.

He wasn't going to correct the doctor, though, not if this narrative was the one that could get him a hysterectomy at the least. He needed all that out of him, and maybe if he could really get it, the graft on top, and if he had to lie and say he'd probably been born with a cock too, he'd say it as often as he had to.

It was exhausting just discussing his options, but he left with several pamphlets and a follow-up appointment, and that did feel good.

Patterson recommended a weekend with one of the standard cocks, before he left. He could see the man's reasoning-- it was something to try out before he committed to the extra expense of designing one from scratch, and it wasn't as though Patterson knew how well he could afford it. And of course, if he could survive a weekend with the Large, then he it would be a piece of cake to get used to carrying his own around all the time. It was something to keep considering.

When he gets to the zoo, he doesn't wander too long before he finds the Spy cooing over the red kangaroos. It's cute... the exhibit doesn't get a lot of traffic, after all-- anyone who wants to see a kangaroo only has to leave civilization and wait. The Spy has an animal to himself, talking to it while locals pass through quickly to get to the elephants.

"You don't want to see something more exotic?" He laughs, joining the other man.

"I came to Australia, I want to see Australian animals."

"Late lunch?" The Sniper offers.

"In a bit."

He watches the Spy watch the roos a little longer, before they leave. He feels better about the appointment, by the time they do. Maybe the surgery still isn't for him-- still was never designed with men like him in mind-- but it's a little closer than he'd thought. It's not completely out of his reach.

They stop into a little place to pick up something to go. The Spy is still in high spirits, still insistent on experiencing the country to his fullest ability, and the Sniper figures that means cuisine as well.

"Roo burger?" He offers, showing the Spy the menu.

"Is that what they call it for the tourists?"

"Ah... no. That's... that's what it is. That's the meat."

The Spy is aghast. "You eat them?"

"Well, sure."

"But they live in zoos!"

"They live everywhere. I was just offering, since you wanted to eat local."

"I wanted to eat local, I did not want to eat the locals-- I just saw them, with the-- the long eyelashes and the sweet faces, why would you eat them?"

"You don't eat cute animals in France?"

"Not zoo animals!"

"Fine, fine. I'm not gonna make you eat zoo animals." He promises. He orders brumby, which he figures fits the bill as far as 'Australian' and 'not a zoo animal' goes, though he's surprised to see it on the menu. He can't think of any local mobs, when he'd worked around them it had been up north.

Back in their suite, the Spy puts aside his unease with unspecified meat-- the Sniper had ordered it, and the Sniper knew well enough what he wouldn't eat, after all... had seen which menu items he'd refused in the past, and had promised it wouldn't be any of the animals he'd seen in the zoo. If he had to guess, he would put it as some kind of local beef, maybe a particular breed of cow, and the dish smells fine.

It's on the second bite that something bothers him enough to ask.

"Brumby? It's horse." The Sniper shrugs.

When he'd been working the land and wild mobs of horses had led to erosion problems, they'd broken some and killed others, he'd eaten it before and he'd made some money selling them. He'd seen horse on the menu in a few places in Europe, though he'd never bothered ordering it before. He doesn't see any reason not to tell the Spy what they're eating, with that in mind, and he certainly doesn't expect the strangled cursing cut short by the Spy being violently ill.

"Sorry... I'm sorry..." The Spy wipes at his mouth, voice weak and watery.

"Hell, I'm sorry." The Sniper leads him away from the table. "Not agreeing with you?"

"N-no. Horse does not agree with me."

"Didn't know. No-- forget it, I'll clean up."

He deposits the Spy in bed with a glass of water. When he gets to bed after cleaning up, the Spy curls up against him, faraway look on his face.

"They stole it first." He whispers.

"What's that?" The Sniper cards his fingers through the other man's hair.

"The horse. The soldiers took it. We never found out who they took it from, either, but it was dying. It was dying, and so were we. When the supply lines were sabotaged, they merely stole from us, everyone in town was starving. We-- my friend and I-- we stole it, in the middle of the night. It came with us, with no hesitation. We shot it, in the woods. I was faster, and I saw better in the dark, I ran all the way into town and woke the butcher, we carried the tools out. Everything that was edible, we smuggled back into town. Not enough, but a few people didn't starve who might have."

"I didn't know."

"Of course you did not know. I have never told you. I do not like to steal food. I don't... I don't like to think of the things I did when I was desperate. I am sorry about spoiling lunch, it isn't your fault."

"Hush. Dinner we'll-- we'll just have something simple. Soup or pasta or something."

"All right. Tell me about your appointment."

"Went okay. He... he'll do the hysterectomy, says it's no problem, and... and maybe the other thing. He recommended walking around with a temporary graft a couple days, said I ought to be sure it's for me before I pay for a custom job. Said he could do a ladies' cock for the weekend, they're smaller, but... Well. 'm not much interested in getting a ladies' anything, anyway."

The Sniper takes a couple of deep breaths. The Spy had shared, so could he.

"The girl... one I slept with. I was new to the city, away from home for the first time, really... Cut all my hair off soon as I could, dressed in work clothes all the time. Long before I started in with any hormones, but when I was in town, I mean... I got exposed to low levels of australium, not enough for the moustache or anything. Getting off-track, was gonna tell you about the girl."

"The girl with the cock." The Spy nods.

"I heard her telling her girlfriends about it, in the bar. Fucking hell, but I thought I'd walked into a brave new world. I thought she was like me. She had pigtails and a moustache and she was wearing a long skirt, heard her say it wouldn't fit in her old shorts, but... So I went over and asked her about the surgery, was it easy, could anyone get one. She said sure, a temporary graft didn't even cost that much, she'd done it with her mad money." He snorts. "Someday maybe I'll have enough distance to think it's funny. I thought she was a man, working on changing, and she thought I was a woman-- one who slept with other women, on top of it. Couldn't either of us have been wronger."

"When did you know you were wrong?"

"When we got to her place. It was just... feminine. Too feminine. I mean, I had things that weren't always the... the manliest. Stuff my parents bought me, things I couldn't much help, or even things I liked, just that weren't what most blokes considered manly. It's not like I saw a pink throw pillow and said 'oops, this one's a girl', but... the way the whole place felt, you know? It felt like a woman's home. She said she'd never done it with another girl, but she thought she ought to, just while she had the cock for the weekend, and was I all right to try it, and... well..."

The Spy merely looks at him, arms coming up around his waist.

"It didn't feel right blowing her off. I'd gone home with her hoping to talk about... about trying to change, about making myself right, and how did she manage it, and then it turned out she was just a-- a bloody sexual tourist, and that it was normal. Fine for girls to do for fun, not fine for... for me. But she was nice. She didn't have to be. Out on stations, plenty of girls cut off their hair and dress same as men, just 'cause it's easier, no one thinks anything of it, but in the city I stood out, and she was real sweet to me whatever she thought about me. I didn't think it would hurt to experiment."

The Spy nods, smiling wryly. "I would have enjoyed it more if the women I have had to sleep with had come with cocks..."

"Yeah, well. It hurt like hell, I hated having her up there. She was careful and all, didn't even bleed, but it hurt. It was over fast-- guess they're sensitive when they're new, dunno. I pretended to like it fine. She held me after-- I did like that... times I think it was worth the godawful pain of it because she held me and made me breakfast. I couldn't get that with anyone else, you know? Before you, the other... other times I've gotten someone else off, it's been out the door-- if there even was a door. Back then I appreciated just being held by someone."

"Now?" The Spy squeezes him.

"Yeah, course I like you holding me. Not always right after sex. Hormones I guess, 'cause she was before all that and I just wanted a cuddle mostly. After I started with 'em I was horny more often-- all the time, for a while. And now I kind of... it changes, yeah? I keep myself stable as I can with it, and I'm never not me, but..."

"Mm. But it depends, on how recent the injection. I know, I've... noticed, I suppose, little things... just little things."

He nods along with the Spy, before rolling onto his side so that they can face each other. "They could do the surgery, and... and I might. Doc made a big deal out of telling me I'd be sterile, but... I mean, course I would be. I-- I asked, about freezing the eggs. He said not to get my hopes up about it, but he thinks I'm a bleeding hermaphrodite--"

"Wait, why does the doctor thing you-- What?"

"Intersex, that's what they call it." He shakes his head. He doesn't know if the term helps any, he doesn't know if the Spy has ever heard it. He'd only ever heard of it in animals, before Patterson went 'diagnosing' him, and those were all sterile.

"Why does your doctor think you are intersexed, then?"

"Because it's easier to give parents a healthy baby that's got one easy gender, and it's easier to take the prick off than deal with the-- y'know, that whole mess, on a newborn. He said sometimes one grows up and wants his stuff back. Figured maybe I ought to let him think maybe that's what I am, if he'll do the surgeries for me that way. Got the impression there aren't that many other doctors who do this. Permanent grafts for folks who come in with one thing and want to leave with another."

"I see." The Spy nods. He doesn't, not quite. He's not sure if this is a blessing or a headache. The Sniper seems to be treating it as a bit of both.

"Was born in the house." The Sniper says, unprompted. "I... I'm not that, either. Hell... bloody fucking hell, it's like every time I talk to a professional I know less about what I am. No... no, that's not true. Medic... Medic was actually... pretty good. But-- I mean--"

"It is not exactly the answer we wanted. Maybe it's the answer we need, for now."

"Maybe. If it's safer to do it this way, I don't mind him thinking what he likes about what I was born with. I mean, the whole point of it all's I want the whole world thinking I was born with a cock, don't I? Not that I need the whole world thinking about my-- But just to get to be myself in public and not have anyone guess at... at all that. So... so if Patterson thinks I came out of the womb with extra parts, that doesn't bother me, except..."

"Except?"

"Except he might toss everything if he thinks I'm barren anyway, so... I want the eggs. I want everything out of me, but I'm not ready to say that I'm never gonna be a dad. Yeah, well... maybe it won't matter. I mean, who'd ever have a kid for us?"

The Spy scoots down the bed, to move into the Sniper's lap again, his forearm resting along the thigh, hand curling around one hip. He doesn't have any answers, not to that. He doesn't want the Sniper to have to give up on anything. He doesn't want to give up on it himself, he'd seen families walking through the zoo, parents smiling after their children... he'd lost hope years ago when it came to having a family of his own, before the Sniper brought the question up one night between them, and now...

Now he wants to be the father holding onto a little hand and reading the names of the animals to someone small. It's not the most realistic dream he's ever had... but it's a hard one to shake now.


	24. Chapter Twenty Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reasons for the trip...

The Sniper finds it odd how easily he adapts to life, with RED behind him, to lazing about hotels waking up next to the Spy every morning, and watching television in bed while the Spy makes odd-hours phone calls in French. He still thinks he'll be glad to get out of the city, but it's not so bad being there with the Spy. He loves how the man reacts to the local tech, a combination of eager and curious want, and cautious mistrust. He loves gadgetry, practical or otherwise, but has no idea what to do with anything more cutting edge than his own old spy gear had been. In any other country on earth he would have been fine with that, and here the world has outstripped his understanding.

When the Sniper looks into buying a mobile phone-- not yet sure he'll commit to it, but if the visit to his parents go well he's willing to buy the best model he can leave the country with-- the Spy is taken with how 'science fiction' the old phones look.

"Well, sure, compared to those bricks they'll sell to other countries. It's the best thing I can buy here and then travel with, but it's nothing like the new ones everyone's walking around with nowadays." The Sniper says, turning one over in his hands. It's like the model he'd had, when he'd been living up north, but when he'd left Australia they weren't quite as old, and he couldn't take it with him then. It's comfortingly familiar, next to the downright futuristic things with the touch screens.

"This is older than that?" Spy holds up the two phones, brow furrowing. "Then why does the new one not look like something from the future?"

"In what universe is this not something from the future to you?"

"Yes, yes, of course it is-- but... this one looks like on Star Trek." Spy demonstrated, flipping the thing open and then closed. "We... we watched it at the-- we watched it every week, before I started going out on weekends."

The Sniper nods, and it's not hard reading between the lines, they both have to be careful to excise any mentions of the companies from their speech in public.

"All right, well, look at the new one." The Sniper shakes his head, fumbling through a demonstration. Technology had definitely made some headway since he'd been out of the country, but he wasn't adrift the way the Spy was. He understood it well enough to be amused-- albeit guiltily-- at the Spy's glassy-eyed stares. He set it back on the display stand, turning to the girl at the till. "Might come back for one of the old ones to travel with, I'll know in a week or so if I need to."

"All right." She chirps, waving them off.

The Sniper drags the Spy past the more confusing shops, anything too technical or too dizzying in its use of digital displays, and buys him a coffee before they head back to the hotel.

"See enough of the city for today?" He asks. Since the zoo, they've visited the botanical gardens and a couple of old churches, the heavy, traditional architecture providing some haven from the bright, shiny future-world around them.

"I had a fine time, mon homme, but yes, I think I will be happy to spend the rest of the evening in."

"What's that one?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, I reckon I know what 'beau' means, and not as though 'grand' was something tough to puzzle out, but what's that one?"

"Mon homme? Only what you have always been. My man."

"Oh." He smiles, hooking an arm around the Spy's waist. "Yeah. Guess I am."

"Since before I ever got my hands on you, the one for me." He rests his chin on the Sniper's shoulder, grinning like a particularly pleased cat.

"Go back in tomorrow, at the hospital... Nervous about it, to be honest."

The Spy takes his hands and tugs him towards the suite's little sofa, and once the Sniper is seated, the Spy curls up next to him and rests his head in the other man's lap.

The Sniper is grateful. For the implicit trust, the strength he can borrow from it, for just the comfortable weight of it... and mostly, for the way the Spy doesn't ask him questions right away.

"Are you having second thoughts?"

"Yeah. No. Not-- I want this. I... I really do, I want to-- just, breathe easier with it, y'know? I need to have the hysterectomy, know that much. Every time I think about my insides it gives me the creeps, and now it doesn't have to. I can just be done with it. It's still a big deal. Wanting it doesn't make it easy to go through with, just like having the technology doesn't make it easy to get."

The Spy squeezes his knee. "What if your Doctor Patterson knows there is a deadly assassin in the waiting room expecting you to come out happy?"

"Don't think that'd help me any, but I appreciate the thought." He chuckles. "I'm looking forward to being done with it, yeah? To just... Don't laugh?"

"Laugh? Never."

"I thought I was gonna get one." He stares off into the distance, mouth twisting into a self-deprecating smile. "I realized there was a, a mistake with everything, when I was a kid, so when kids my age were going through puberty, I... I mean, it wasn't like a long-term delusion or anything, but for just a little while, I really did believe it'd just... come in. Like the universe would just get with the program and realize I was a boy and I'd wake up some morning after a visit from the cock fairy. You said you wouldn't laugh."

"I am not laughing at you, cher. But you cannot ask me not to laugh at 'cock fairy'."

"Yeah, been getting a couple visits a week regular from the cock fairy all year." He snorts, smacking the Spy's shoulder lightly.

"I walked right into that one, did I?"

"You did."

"So now you will get one. Better late than never?"

"Think so. Hope so."

"Do... do you remember when I asked you if we could go out someplace nice for dinner?"

"Sorry..." He frowns. "Had so much on my mind I must've-- what were you feeling? Could find an Italian place--"

"No, no-- The steakhouse that we went to."

"Oh." The Sniper relaxes, his fingers finding their way into the Spy's hair to stroke gentle little circles across his scalp. "Yeah."

"I have been thinking about it. Just... This surgery, to me, is steak. It's the nice dinner and the dim lighting. It is what I prefer."

"So what am I before the surgery?"

"You are you. The parts... I mean, what you have between your legs right now, maybe that is the Sugar Pine. I tried some things, I enjoyed them, every meal that we ate there was just as real as the one we had in the steakhouse. They were real dates because I was there with you. And if you were only comfortable eating in little places like that, I would be happy to... to do that, for the rest of my life I think. If I was there with you. But I do like restaurants with tablecloths and dim lighting."

"I like steak." He manages.

The Spy laughs. "I just wanted to say... I will be glad, to have you do this if you want it. I will enjoy it very much. But... It was all real because I went there with you, you know? You are the man I have been making love to, and the man I would like to keep making love to. Everything else is the same. Everything we did before was real to me, it was not just a placeholder for this."

"I know that. I... hell, it's why you're here, isn't it? We wouldn't have lasted a year and a half together if I was, or if I thought I was."

"A year and a half-- It hasn't been that long?"

"That long, since I told you about me."

"Oh." He tilts his head, kissing the top of the Sniper's thigh through a soft-worn spot in his jeans. "... You said you could find an Italian place?"

The Sniper laughs at that, long and loud-- longer and louder than it deserves, he's sure, but after everything his body only needs the slightest excuse for levity.

He cleans up. With the heat, he doesn't plan on anyplace that requires a jacket, but he wears the trousers from his airplane suit, and the shirt. The hungry look the Spy gives him is worth bothering with the tie.

La Trattoria is nice-- at least, the Sniper finds himself attracted to everything on the menu, while the Spy occasionally brightens and then scowls over descriptions.

"'S matter?"

"Everything on this menu is hiding shellfish."

"Allergic?" He figures he might as well ask this time.

"No... Maybe. I wouldn't know. We never... I've never tried, I don't intend to start. It doesn't appeal enough. And sausage always feels like a gamble when I don't know the man who made it... Ah! Fusilli alla contadina! Now that... that looks irresistible."

"Mind if I have the prawns?"

He nods. "Feel free. I take it we are near enough to the ocean for it."

"Might show you the beaches, before we leave." The Sniper grins. The Spy nods again, expression bright if not wholly committed.

The avocado seafood is exactly what he wanted it to be, everything he's missed about eating this close to home. He doesn't offer any, out of deference to the Spy's shellfish avoidance-- something he absolutely can't understand, but then, he hardly minds eating all of them.

The Spy rhapsodizes on his pasta anyway, making indecent noises over every sauce-drenched vegetable, sucking almost obscenely at a large piece of broccoli before finally just eating it.

"Definitely the right choice coming here the day before the surgery, and not the day after." The Sniper grumbles. "You know, watching you eat sometimes is an uncomfortable experience."

"Oh please." He grins, licking his fork. "As if you have never put me through hell at a restaurant."

"... Have I?" He shouldn't be as proud of that as he is, he knows.

"Every lunch that you have stolen my pickle spear at."

"You don't like 'em. I do. I don't s-- oh. Right. Yeah, that. Maybe we're not restaurant people." He chuckles. "I could be a takeaway person."

"You could be a person who cooks, even."

"Maybe. Long as I don't have to do all the work."

His instructions for the night before the procedure warn against alcohol, and he orders a coffee instead of a glass of wine.

"I am getting gelato." The Spy nods decisively.

"... Really?"

He drops his voice down to a near-whisper, bobbing his eyebrows. "In public, it may be my very last chance."

"You're such a bastard." The Sniper rolls his eyes, but he orders dessert for them both anyway.

The Spy winds up eating half his peach melba for breakfast the next morning, with a reminder not to eat or drink anything before the hospital.

The procedure itself is less than a blur. The nurse shaves him with professional dispassion and he's covered back up and asked to count backwards and the next thing he knows he's struggling to tell them the drugs didn't take and he's coming out of it too soon, only for Patterson to laugh.

"You're all right, mate. All done, just healing you up." He promises, grinning down through the lifting fog.

The lasers remind him of Medic, warm and red and healing instead of cutting, and the instructions fly by him but he's given another pamphlet about aftercare that explains everything.

Back in the hotel suite, all he can see is a new scar not far from one hipbone, short and already healed over to the point it looks old.

Past that, his skin is too smooth, but the cock... that's all his.

"How do you feel?" The Spy smiles, coming to perch on the end of the bed, a cup of tea in his hands. "You can have this now?"

"I feel... I feel good. Bit off still-- Yeah, I can have that. Thanks."

"You feel like you did the right thing for yourself?" The Spy passes him the mug and rests a hand on his leg, warm from the heat in the ceramic, seeping through the cool bedsheet and into the Sniper's bones.

"I do."

"What's it like?"

"Not the best-looking cock in the world."

"Well-- I mean, do... do you take it back, or--?"

"No, that's the point." He laughs. "It's just me. It's... just... Me. It's about average and I..."

"You are pleased with it." The Spy smiles, relaxes. "Your shoulders sit higher, did you know that? I never noticed how much weight was always on you... you bore it so well for as long as I have known you. But there is a weight missing now. I like seeing that."

"I couldn't be happier. It's mine. It's not a factory model, and I could walk around naked in a gym locker room once the hair grows back and everyone in the place would think I'd had it all my life-- I've never been able to be in a locker room, not with people. I don't have to be afraid of that anymore, d'you know how weird that is? There's nothing to find out. No yeast infections and estrogen creams and piss funnels and no hiding... just me."

The Spy curls up low on the bed, to wrap his arms around the Sniper's thighs and butt his head gently into one hip. "Good. I'm glad."

He nods, resting a hand on the Spy's head and sipping at his tea. He still feels worn out, still punchy from being sedated, but he can feel the difference in himself. The weight of having something there that's a part of him. The way walking from the cab to the room he could feel it-- still bandaged carefully to his thigh, then, to make it easier for him to walk after coming out of surgery.

Better, that he couldn't feel what he no longer had. The physical awareness of that space up within him and the folds of flesh that moved when he did. It had been at its worst between puberty and the hormone treatment, when even when he wasn't on his period, he could feel a baseline wetness there, something slick and uncomfortable that he could never get rid of. It was easier to ignore when he started drying up, but it's a strange relief to be free of it completely. It's the one thing he didn't even take into consideration, that he would feel so much better just not having all that.

Best, though... best is what he barely touches on with the Spy, the security of having the proper genitals. He's admitted to some fears. It was hard living with the team, back in those days, knowing how easily they could turn on him if he ever picked the wrong time to shower and got himself caught, how easily they could go from being the men he trusted with his life to the men who'd beat it out of him. He's never believed he could take even half the team on in any kind of a fight, and if the Engineer had ever really turned on him, he wouldn't have respawn to fall back on-- not that respawn would be any kind of a mercy if the team had found out about him.

There are other fears, that he's never told the Spy about. Similar fears that he didn't dare speak of.

The Spy knows what it's like to worry about being beaten by an angry mob with opinions about what he does with his genitals, after all. The Spy could understand that whether or not the Sniper raised the subject, he's traveled the world and not only to the places where it was safe for him to prefer men. The Sniper knows that, and he's been grateful for it once or twice, because it let him talk about his own fear with the knowledge he'd be understood.

He hopes to God the Spy doesn't have any idea about the rest of his fears. There are worse things than the threat of being beaten to death every day, and he'd rather keep that to himself.

Now that he can leave that fear behind him, he feels good. He hadn't realized he could feel this easy, and the Spy takes his tea as he drifts off. He wakes up to the smell of something warm from the kitchen, and he lies in bed just sniffing at the air as it deepens and changes.

He pulls himself out of bed, walking a little awkwardly as the grogginess wears off and he grows more used to the way his own body moves now-- the packer gave him some practice, with having something there, but it's different having honest flesh there, attached to him.

He sits carefully at the little breakfast table between the kitchenette and the suite's living area, and there's an answering warmth swelling up in his chest when the Spy beams at him from the stove.

"Just so you know, I'm in love with you. Probably terminal." He says.

The Spy takes a breath, shaking his head and smiling.

"You're ridiculous." He accuses, setting down a bowl of soup. "Asparagus vichyssoise. I picked it up fresh in the market while you were in surgery. And the chicken."

He returns to the stove, messing about a bit before bringing over a plate. The chicken breast is clean-- no rubs, no sauces, just a pan, a drizzle of olive oil, and a pinch of salt, and the Sniper appreciates it. He doesn't feel in any mood for something fussier than that, but he does reckon the protein will help, and while his mother had never used the word 'vichyssoise', it's not so different from the soup she used to make when the asparagus came in in her little vegetable garden.

It's a potent reminder, half the reason for this trip was to see her-- well, to see both his parents-- but it's still the most comforting thing he can imagine, even if thoughts of his old home have been comfortless lately.

He takes the weekend to get used to the new addition to his anatomy-- something the Spy proves very helpful with, and not just in the ways he'd anticipated. It takes him long enough to get over having a hair trigger, and he does miss the lack of a refractory period, but the Spy offers tips about dressing and avoiding too-easy injuries out of bed, and only mocks him a little bit when he catches him standing naked in front of a full length mirror and gyrating.

"Making sure it's attached right." He says, face heating.

"No you're not." The Spy snorts.

"Nah. I'm not. Come on, though, you did the same thing when you were thirteen, I'll bet."

"Twelve. I was an idiot when I was twelve."

"Nah. Anyway, 's hypnotic."

"I never thought I would say this, mon grand, but put some pants on."

He does, though he notes it doesn't stop the Spy from groping him every time they pass by each other.

It's very hard to glare when he doesn't mean it. Half the time it doesn't even feel sexual-- there are times, of course, when the Spy drapes himself across the Sniper's back and leers and caresses, but there are times when he is merely moving past the Sniper to get to the kitchenette or the bathroom and he gives him a squeeze with the same breeziness he would a peck on the cheek. It's kind of nice.

It can't last, of course. Once he feels up to driving, he rents a ute and tells himself they can't put it off any longer.

"No groping in front of my parents." He says, as they leave the city and hit half-paved roads.

"Of course."

"You know you didn't have to dress up."

"I wanted to make a good impression... Besides, all I have is suits."

The ride is silent a long time after that, but it's not the longest they've spent in a quiet vehicle. Every so often the Spy squeezes his shoulder or his knee, and he drives on.

Soon enough, sheep dot the fields to either side of the road, and finally, the little red house at the heart of the Mundy station comes into view.

"You're going to be all right." The Spy promises.

"Yeah."

"I am right behind you."

"Yeah." He smiles. It's tight, but real, and he's never been happier to feel the Spy at his back.

It feels like an eternity between his knock at the door and his father answering. The years apart have changed the old man, but not much. A little less of the gray hair around his head, a little more depth in the lines of his face, but he's still so much the man the Sniper remembers, that in his mind's eye he sees him, with a full head of dark hair, sunburnt and smiling and the tallest man in the world.

"If you're here to work, we can use you." He grunts, looking the Sniper over before doing a double take to the Spy. "You know we hire jackaroos around here and not lawyers."

"He's just here with me-- He's-- He's here with me, Dad."

His father's mouth falls open and works soundlessly, and then he steps aside, jerking his head. "So this is you now. Your mother expected you a month ago."

"Sorry." He shuffles into the house, head down, and the Spy follows at a careful distance.

"Yeah, well, of all the things to be sorry about, I don't suppose a month even ranks. It was years before that, after all."

"Dad..."

His mother comes rushing out of the kitchen, and in a way seeing her is worse. She doesn't hesitate to hug him, but she's seconds from crying and he doubts it's just gladness.

"Come in and sit, and-- Oh, and your gentleman friend, I-- There's a kettle on, I... Are you well?"

"Yeah, Mum. I am, thanks."

His father snorts, and he flinches, shooting the Spy a warning look.

"Well. You don't call this well? I mean-- I mean, look at you!"

"He looks just like you." The Spy says mildly.

The Sniper's father ignores him, though his mother makes a small sound, her hand covering her mouth, and the Sniper can't tell if that's good or bad.

"What happened to you, Princess?"

"Don't call me 'Princess', Dad. This is just me."

"Bullshit. This is the city, and all that garbage, we never should've let you go off, look what it's done to you! Should've kept you away from all that, it's not decent down there!"

"This is who I'm supposed to be. It's who I've always been. I stopped trying to tell you for so many years because I got so sick of hearing I was wrong, but this isn't something the city did to me."

His father shakes his head. "Who you've always been, like hell it is, you were never like this before, not when you were little! You never complained about being my little princess then!"

"What, when I was a kid? Dad, you could have called me 'hey, you fucking little shithead' and I'd have followed you--"

"Don't you use language like that in front of your mother!"

"And I'd have followed you to the moon!" The Sniper continues, raising his voice. "I'd have done anything to! I wanted to grow up to be you!"

His father falls silent, and so goes the room, and he realizes he's the only one standing, that he's just shouted down his father, that his chest is heaving and he doesn't know if he's going to cry or be sick or run or what.

"I wanted to be like you." He repeats softly. When the Spy reaches for his hand, he grips it hard, letting himself be guided back to the sofa.

"'m taking a walk. Don't wait up on me." His father says, and the belligerence is gone, replaced by something sad and bewildered. He grabs his hat and is out the door before any of them can speak, not the way the collective tongue of the room has been tied.

His mother's eyes are wet, and when she moves her hand from her mouth, her voice wavers, but she finds it.

"Was there ever a time... I mean-- Did I do something? Too much, or... or not enough? I know it wasn't the cities, lamb... but when was it? Could we have done anything different?"

"It's not your fault, Mum. It's just me." He shakes his head and doesn't meet her gaze.

"You look so different. But your friend's right, you-- you're the spit and image of him. You... I remember. You had a doll. Your father's brought it up a few times, saying you were normal then."

He nods. 'Baby', it's rather unimaginative name had been. He'd dragged it along behind him when he'd followed his father, to show it the animals, or the equipment, to pass along every little lesson he was given, eager to be told he'd be a good dad someday.

His mother shakes her head, blinking. "I remember, though... I do remember. You wanted to, to practice being a father, and we said you were mistaken, you'd grow up to be a mum. And you never played with it after that. Has this really been-- all this time?"

"Long as I can remember."

"Oh." She nods and looks down at her hands and he wishes he didn't have to hear the sob hiding behind the deep breaths she takes. "Oh."

"It isn't anybody's fault. I'm not unhappy like this, Mum."

She looks at Spy, for a long moment. "Is he-- Your friend-- I mean--?"

"You mean am I in love with your son?"

"My--? My... son. Yes. Of course. Well, you know all about this, I can't imagine he tells a lot of people. How do you tell people?"

"Don't, mostly. Told him. I just needed a friend who knew."

"Have you... ever been a girl?" She asks.

The Spy laughs. "Only one weekend when I was very, very drunk. No, no, I have never-- I've been what you see before you. All the parts are original."

"But you... How do you get used to it?"

"Because I am in love with your son."

She bites her lip and looks between them, before sighing and placing a hand on the Sniper's knee.

"Is this all right with you, Mum?"

"I always wanted you to settle down with a nice man-- one who could support you! I always thought you'd have a white dress and children, but... I don't suppose it would have been any easier if you'd brought a woman. I don't know what your father will say."

"If he notices."

"Do you want the guest room?"

"I dunno."

"Vic... I want you to stay. Just for tonight. Just to see if we can't... can't come to some kind of an understanding. It's been so long since we've known you. If we ever knew you... You're the only child I have, lamb, and your father isn't going to send you off."

"Isn't he?"

"Not if he wants to sleep in his own bed tonight-- not if he wants to sleep in his own house tonight! Just try with him. Just try with him for one day."

"I loved that miserable bastard."

"Dear, we both loved that miserable bastard and we both still do." She picks herself up, and after a deep breath, the tears are gone. "I'm sorry I ignored you so much growing up... I didn't know what to do about it then and I don't now. That's one thing I could have done differently, I saw this coming and I thought it would go away if I let it. I thought you'd get over it... I suppose there's no chance--"

"None."

"No. Of course not. Oh, heaven's sake, where is your father, he knew I needed his help on dinner and he's run off on us..."

"Allow me." The Spy stands smoothly, offering her his hand. "I am not useless in the kitchen."

She hesitates. "We needed a chicken killed, I ought to go and--"

"Not a problem. Point me in the right direction. It's been years, but I assume it is like riding a bicycle, killing a chicken."

"Oh-- Well, they're out-- Are you sure, you're dressed awfully nice for it--"

He hands his blazer to the Sniper and strides out with her, and the Sniper watches through the kitchen window as the Spy kills and cleans the bird with all the efficiency of his days on the battlefield.

His father comes back inside with them. He doesn't say anything about the Sniper's outburst, or about the argument leading up to it, but he nods to the Spy as he carries the chicken into the kitchen.

"Your friend's not as useless as he looks."

"No." The Sniper grins. "He's not at all useless."

He frowns. "Wait... this isn't someone you're bringing home to meet us? Well that means you're going to stop all this nonsense, isn't it?"

"What nonsense, Dad?" The Sniper doesn't think he needs to ask, but he does, his stomach sinking.

"This man nonsense. I mean, you're not-- I mean, maybe I don't know what the hell you are nowadays, but you're not a pooftah!"

"How do you know? Someone make you the expert on spotting pooftahs?"

"Well, you know, they're all-- all like that, and you're... I mean, you won't do anything girly anymore, will you? So what's this?"

"This is me, that's all. I keep telling you, I'm just me and that's all I can do. And you don't need a limp wrist and a purse to fall in love with a man."

"Men don't fall in love with men, and if you were a man and I'm not admitting you are because that's crazy talk, but if you were a man, you wouldn't be queer!"

"Why not?"

"Because! Because you look-- Because you're not-- Because I didn't raise you to be! And I've never met a pooftah who was--"

"Michael Allison."

"What?"

"Paul Whitford."

"The hell are you on about?"

"You remember them?" The Sniper folds his arms.

"Paul and Michael. They were good men. Worked here when you were a little thing, yeah. What's that got to do with anything? Oh-- Oh no. On top of the whole list of ridiculous things I've heard today, you're not telling me those two were queer."

"Moved halfway across the continent to a place where no one knew them or anyone they used to know, to a place where they could go days without seeing a single soul besides us-- days without seeing us even, sometimes, and they never talked about their families, much less to them. Well, and I caught them kissing no less than twice, out past the old barn."

"That's ridiculous." His father shakes his head, but there's no conviction.

"And then there's old Henry."

"Old Henry Sattler? No, that is crazy-- that man was old enough to be MY father!"

"It's not a new invention, Dad. Goes back to the Greeks at least. Hell, there were probably cave pooftahs. He had another man's medals from the war hanging on his wall and everyone knows he never married. Face it, you've known four queers and none of them are anything like what you expected."

"If you like men, why couldn't you just stay a girl?"

"Because I'm not a girl. Because I hated everything about myself until I left civilization and I didn't have to think about it. It took me so long to live with myself... I like who I am now, Dad. You don't have to like me, too. It'd be nice, but I'm not holding my breath."

"You left, you look like a whole different person, like a stranger-- You changed your name!"

"Y'can still call me Vic. You could call me son, but... I mean, I get it, Dad."

"But you don't call yourself Vic. You call yourself something else. A name we didn't give you."

He digs out his wallet, handing it over. "I went through a few names looking for one that was mine. I like this one. But it says there Victor's my middle name and Mundy's my last."

"You're not a stranger." His father nods at last. "I don't know who the hell you are, but tell me I used to."

"Dunno."

"I was the first person to hold you-- Your mother tell you that? When you were born. You were ugly and you cried and I was never happier. I knew you then. I guess I haven't known you since."

"What's it like? Being a dad?"

"Bloody terrifying. We weren't ready for you. We were proud of you."

"I quit that job you always hated, you know. For good."

He nods slowly. "Maybe that's a start, then. I don't know how to talk to a son. I never thought I would need to know. I don't know how to think about you like that. I don't. Did you really want to grow up to be like me?"

"Course I did."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

There's nothing else to say. They barely look in each other's direction all through dinner, and after, in the guest room, the Sniper pulls himself into the Spy's arms, buries his face against his chest, and lets himself cry again. Not half so hard as he had after that first honest phone call, but there's a hitch in his breath and the tears he hadn't been willing to shed in front of his parents. There's relief and frustration in it together.

"That was honestly better than I hoped for." He says, voice flat.

"Does your father accept you?"

"It's hard to tell with him. He doesn't understand but he stopped shouting. He misses what he never really had."

"He doesn't recognize what he did have. It sounds as though you were an adoring son... it is a waste of his time to try and miss an adoring daughter, when the adoration is what remains the same."

"Tell him that."

"Maybe I will."

"Don't." His hands tighten on the Spy's arms.

"All right." The Spy sighs, cradling him close and kissing his temple. "All right."


	25. Chapter Twenty Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And from Australia to France...

The Sniper answers his mother's questions over the last of breakfast, the ones she can make herself ask. He's distracted by the Spy's absence-- the Spy had expressed an interest in the sheep, and sheep was the one subject his father was comfortable talking about, so he let the Spy come out to watch some of the day's work.

"I've got your Christmas presents." She says, pushing away her mug, with the last dregs of her coffee, shaking off the last of the uncomfortable conversation about his surgery. She'd assumed he'd had the work done before he left Australia, was surprised it was so recent. "Yours came in the mail, we got them safe. Your father won't say anything, of course--"

"Course."

"He liked everything fine. Hard giving anything to your father, he never asks for anything, but you can't go too wrong with coffee and he gets new socks from me every year..."

The Sniper nods, following her in to the hall closet and then to the sofa. He recognized the nervous prattle-- his mother was never the type to fill comfortable silences, and she'd go hoarse trying if she was, but she couldn't let an uncomfortable one rest. 'More comfortable chairs', she'd always called it, her habit of bringing up something new whenever things grew too awkward.

He opens the box first, pulling out a sweater-- it has too much shape to hang quite right on his frame, and not quite enough length, but it's pure undyed wool for the yarn, with thick cabling.

"Didn't know what your measurements were, I tried to go off the last one I made you. I-- I guess I thought you'd be bigger, or-- shorter... Haven't seen you in so long. Well, you definitely got your shape from your father's side of the family." She shakes her head, with a nervous laugh. "I thought you'd want one, I know you're all over the place, and..."

"It'll come in handy, Mum, thanks." He nods. "We're, erm, we're going to France after this, and it'll be winter there."

She hands him the second gift, large and flat and wrapped in glossy red paper. It feels more like a book than like another box, and he runs a couple of fingers around the edge, finding the spine and then the top. Definitely a book, but a big one, a coffee table book.

He expects photographs of home and places like it, to fall in line with what she'd said about his traveling. Instead, he peels back the paper to see the tattered dust jacket of an old friend.

"Library was having a sale. You were the last person to ever check it out, I... I don't know. I thought just to throw in with the sweater, you might like it, or..."

"Yeah. Yeah, I love it."

"I used to take you... It wasn't all terrible, was it, being our daughter?"

"No, Mum. It wasn't terrible to be yours. I just... I was never a girl. That's the only thing. There's nobody I'd have rather belonged to. This was my favourite book in that library, did you know?"

She shakes her head. "I didn't. There were others you checked out two, three times. You only got this one once."

"Well, it was... big to carry." He shrugs. "I'm glad you bought it. I'd've been disappointed if I made the trip back out to that library and it wasn't there."

They laugh at that a little, his mother shaking her head again.

"You've been all over the world, there's nothing for you in a library no bigger than the living room."

"Nah. Not anymore. There was then, though. I was always happy you took me. You did things right with me, Mum. No one could've done everything right, who would've known how? But... When I was ten, remember?"

"Going on eleven. You were afraid of gym." She nods.

School hadn't been every day-- they hoverbussed the station kids into town a few days a month, for exams and to turn in projects, and when he was older, for gym classes. The rest was all air school. Kids who lived further out than they had, he assumed, saw less of a real schoolhouse than he had, and there were kids who lived in the townships proper who must have gone every day, though at the time he'd found that unfathomable.

The gym classes had been terrifying, the idea of being split off with the girls, the idea that when he was older he'd be sharing a locker room with them, a shower. He wouldn't get the same options as the boys, who would get to join in with the town boys' sports, even if it was only a few days. But there had been archery... Archery had been worth it. He'd liked it enough that his parents had gotten him a bow and arrow that Christmas. Wanting to encourage him in liking something, he wouldn't wonder-- that whole year he'd been anxious about so many things, as the world started stacking the deck against him and his impending womanhood became a grim spectre on the horizon. His father had set up targets for him out back of the barn, and archery took his mind off of everything, up until puberty finally hit.

"Yeah. Was. And a lot of things, really. You were good about it. You tried to be, even if you didn't understand."

"Thanks, lamb."

"I'm sorry... if I wasn't what you wanted. But I'm not sorry that I'm me today. If that makes sense. I'm doing real well with just life. There's a man who's good to me. I don't get itchy in my own skin now. I hope that's good enough."

"Oh... you know that's what I wanted for you. Maybe I didn't want it like this, but... I mean, you're safe and you're healthy. If that's all I come away with, it's enough for me."

She doesn't sound wholly convinced, but he appreciates that she tries. He puts his gifts in the guest room, pausing briefly outside the pale pink door down the hall. It hasn't been painted since he's been gone, he can still see the 'V' scratched into the paint.

He doesn't reach for the knob. He doesn't want to know how little has changed inside.

The Spy surprises him, ducking into the guest room after him.

"Thought you were out with the sheep."

"I was. There are a lot of them."

"Yeah. Mum said they bought off the neighbours' land a couple years back, I've got it in a letter. They're... they're really expanding the place. Wool, mostly. And selling a good stud ram's worth a tidy bundle. Mum used to make cheese sometimes, maybe she still does. Not to sell, just small batches."

The Spy's eyes go round at this, and slightly glassy, the look the Sniper only sees him get over food-- and not so different from the look he gets over sex. "It has been so many years since I've had a good sheep cheese..."

"Yeah? Could ask about it."

"I think your father likes me, you know."

That gives the Sniper pause. It would be hard to tell, but then, the Spy had plenty of practice reading people who didn't make it easy.

"How do you figure?" He asks, feeling a little trepidation over it. He's not even sure how well his father likes him, it feels like too much to ask, for him to like the Spy, but he can't help wanting it.

"Well, he was showing me some of the sheep. Fine animals, I asked the appropriate questions, said some things about the spread of land and the weather. He asked if I had a lot of experience killing chickens."

"And you said?" The Sniper asks, leaning forward. There's a definite chill of dread going down his spine at all the answers the Spy could have given.

"I said 'and men'. And then he asked me 'so what kind of bloody pooftah are you anyway' and I said 'the French kind'. And I would call what he did a smile, on his face. Perhaps not on anyone else's. And then he told me that the man in the living room was his little girl, and if I was to be sniffing around his Princess that I had better not hurt him."

He rakes a hand across his face. "My father, the man who hates mercenaries and still calls me 'princess', that's the man you think likes you because you admitted to being my boyfriend and killing people?"

"Pretty much." The Spy shrugs.

"So this weekend's a washout."

The Spy laughs and takes his arm. "Come on, show me around. Where did you like to spend your time when you were younger?"

"Tromped all over the place mostly. Sheep cheese what you grew up with? I was gonna ask Mum about it for you."

"No. No, we had mostly cow's milk cheeses, near where I am from. But then I started to travel, you know. I found an Ossau-Iraty in Basque country that was to die for. That one I like even more than Roquefort. And Roquefort, you can only legally name so if it is made in Roquefort."

"Bloody take your cheeses seriously in France."

"We do."

"All right, come on. She'll be in the office about now, reckon."

He leads the Spy to the back of the house, where his mother is indeed in the office, typing away at a keyboard connected to a small beige cube with a screen.

"Shouldn't be surprised." The Sniper groans, joining her at the desk and giving the monitor a pat. "This thing's about as old as I am, Dad's not replaced it?"

"It still works." She shrugs. "Anyway, I'm glad he let me computerize the place when he did, we're too big now to do without."

"Computerized?" The Spy inspects it, running a hand over the squat body of the thing. It's plugged into the wall, but he can tell that there's nothing beyond that, no banks of cards. Just the little box with the screen, the keyboard, and... "What is that?"

"That's the mouse."

For a moment, he wonders if he's forgotten how to speak English. It looks nothing like a mouse, it looks like a palm-sized oval of rough beige plastic with a big, square depressable button.

He gives up on trying to understand, shortly after, and everything stops when the Sniper's mother laughs and turns to her son with her next question.

"You haven't shown your friend the hovercar, have you?"

It's enough to make him forget that he was there to ask about cheese. Hovercar.

The Sniper's parents own a hovercar.

He has seen things hover in the city, but this, this is something completely different. He'd been told everything out in the countryside was old, and now there is a hovercar, and the Sniper's mother speaks about it as if it is not news.

"I would like to see this hovercar." He nods.

"Yeah, all right." The Sniper puts a broad hand on his back, he can feel the heat through his shirt and it's almost unbearable with the heat of the day in general but he needs the touch to ground him, with the promise of a hovercar.

When they get out to the garage, there is a very ordinary vehicle parked there, mud-spattered and dinged up, and bigger than the one the Sniper had rented. Up at the ceiling and connected to the wall by a thick cord is the hovercar.

It doesn't make the hum he had expected, from a hovering car. It doesn't make any sound at all. There's a small control on the cord, which the Sniper uses to guide it out, before reeling the cord into an open panel on the hovercar's side.

It's built like a car, with fins and headlamps and a convertible top, not at all like a little UFO, and the silence is unnerving.

"I thought the future would make more sounds." He shakes his head, climbing carefully into the passenger's seat.

"Future?" The Sniper laughs. "This is forty-seven years old!"

He hops in far more easily, and the Spy clings to the door handle as it dips slightly with the Sniper's weight and evens out again, still with nary a buzz.

The Sniper drives high enough to clear the sheep and the fences, and the animals barely notice him passing over them, shrugging off the shadow and the slight breeze as unremarkable.

"Mum started me learning to drive on it-- this one's hers. Hovercars are usually ladies' cars, out here. They don't bump around on the roads, see." He explains. "The ute's better for getting work done. Dad never saw much point in buying a special trailer to go with the hovercar when he could drive sheep anywhere they needed to go without."

"He doesn't seem like the type to buy a hovercar."

"Mum did. She was pregnant, said she wasn't rattling me around on the bad roads. Like I said, they're ladies' cars. And it was an old model, they got a good deal on it, and it's run ever since."

There's too much the Spy can't understand about Australia, and the hovercar typifies it all. He loves it, he especially loves it when the Sniper starts really speeding along through empty fields, but he can't fathom this magnificent piece of technology being considered something only a pregnant woman would need. The countryside is closer than the city was, to what he'd always imagined Australia to be, but there are still surprises.

"Can we sneak out to it again later?" He grins, as the Sniper slows down again and starts to turn back.

"Don't have to sneak."

"It's the principle of the thing, cher. To the backseat."

He rolls his eyes, but he parks it, hovering by a tree, and climbs over his seat. The Spy is a little less bold in following suit, they still rest so high above the ground, but with a death-grip on the Sniper's hand, he swings himself over into the back.

"Hello there." He grins.

The Sniper chuckles, pulling him close for a few slow kisses. They don't go any farther than that, and the Spy rides back in the backseat, not willing to brave the climb a second time, with the top down and the car hovering.

"Now I can say I have necked in a hovercar." He sighs.

"Yeah? Who to?" The Sniper laughs, shaking his head.

"To you."

"Yeah, all right."

After dinner, there's a soft cheese to go with the coffee, with a warm, nutty taste. The Spy praises it extensively before being told its provenance, though it's no surprise to him when the Sniper's mother blushes.

The Sniper's father keeps him in the kitchen after, and the Sniper himself stays near the doorway, pretending not to be listening in.

The voices are too low to make out, though his father's tone is the same curt directness he's come to expect, and the Spy's is earnest, reply short.

He moves away before they reemerge, but there's an obvious truce between them, if not a real warmth.

In the guest room, he doesn't need to ask. The Spy smiles wryly and tells him everything.

"I don't think he believes you need special protecting, mon grand." He promises. "But I think he is aware that even retired, we live a dangerous life. I think he is aware that loving me is dangerous, if he understands nothing else. So, he has tasked me with keeping you safe, if I must endanger you with my... poofiness."

"Dunno whether to laugh or cry." The Sniper groans.

"Maybe he only knows how to care for a daughter." The Spy shrugs.

"Yeah. He said as much to me."

"At least he does care, even if he goes about it badly. I promised. You are more likely to protect me, if we ever wind up back to back in a fair fight, but I promised. That's what he needed to hear. It will get easier. The hard part has been dealt with, now it is just... Anamarie cannot wait to meet you, you know."

"She can't wait to meet me?"

The Spy grins, clutching the Sniper's hand between his own. "I said on the phone I have a man, she asked if he was a serious man. I said 'serious about me', and she is excited to meet you. There are a couple of houses to look at, she says she has a favourite for us. There is room for a garden, and the chicken coop she says needs a little repair, but we could have our own chickens, and there is a large garage, and great fireplaces, and she says the kitchen is big enough. It's outside of town a little ways, she said, but I told her that's good for us, I thought... I thought you'd like it."

"Yeah. Probably would. Hey, got something to show you."

He pulls the book out, opening it across their laps.

There are old adverts and magazine covers, and the Spy realizes a few pages in what he's looking at.

"This is your library book."

"They were selling it off. Mum picked it up because no one'd checked it out since me." He nods, smiling. "See, there's you."

He stops on an ad for socks, with a man pinning one into place, and points to another for shirt collars. The Spy traces a finger over the picture.

"I would have to peroxide my hair again for this to be me." He says, finding another well-dressed man with darker hair. "Could I be here?"

"Sure. You've been blond before?"

"When I was young." He frowns.

"Like you with dark hair, anyway."

"Oh!" The Spy turned another few pages and stopped, his finger going to a man in a red shirt and a brown hat, with beautifully detailed forearms, and an arrow of dark hair on a bared chest. Nothing about him was exactly the Sniper, but the whole effect was perfect. "You!"

"Think they ever meet?" The Sniper grins, flipping between the two pages.

The Spy rests his head on a shoulder, snaking an arm around the Sniper's waist. "Of course. And fall in love. It is not easy, but they do."

"Do they have much in common?" The Sniper asks, turning to the picture of two men intimately sharing a living room, the one that had changed his life so long ago. Neither of them is the man stoking a furnace in the other painting, but he can pretend.

"They both adore coffee, and they are both very demanding about it. And they both know what it is to kill a man. And they both want this... this quiet home that is theirs."

"Good enough for me."

"Good enough for both of us. Or them."

He closes the book and sets it aside, cuddling down with the Spy in his arms.

"Your mother's craft room is very nice." The Spy yawns, and the Sniper is sure it's just his way of making important information sound off-hand, because his mother never had a craft room, not before he moved out.

He sleeps a little easier without the ghost of his childhood lurking down the hall. She deserves a craft room, anyway. Good place to organize all her yarns.

They leave early in the morning, and the Sniper feels good about how things went. They didn't go perfectly, but by the end of the weekend, his father had been using the right words about half the time, even if it was sometimes a bit grudging... he could live with that. Could live with being called 'Princess' as long as it came with a 'he' in the same sentence.

The whole trip back to the city and then the flight to France is blurry in his mind. The Spy made a call from the airport, he knows that much, and then the flight.

He's immensely thankful for the sweater, even slightly ill-fitting, when they land. He's half frozen before they get to their hotel for the night, and the cold is enough to make his chest ache the next morning when they drive out to meet Anamarie and her family.

She speaks perfect English with a slight accent, half her native French and half northern England-- her husband speaks it haltingly, but he greets the Sniper and the Spy as warmly as he would old friends.

Michel is still tiny, and the Sniper's chest aches all the more watching the Spy hold him and coo to him.

Anamarie's house is cozy, not far from the real estate offices, and dominated by a large kitchen, with two small iceboxes flanking a double-stove, rather than a single refrigerator. The Sniper still feels a chill he's unaccustomed to, but the only word to describe this home is warm, and after the fight it took to wring half-compromises from his father, it's so nice to be introduced simply as the Spy's man, and accepted as such, and then just to be accepted.

While Spy has the baby, and her husband runs around the corner to pick up paperwork for the houses, Anamarie talks to Sniper. She has a picture on her mantle of a teenager, a boy, in a handed-down and much-patched jacket, with a little girl in his lap, both of them blond.

"Is that him?" He touches the frame.

"That is us. I was living with his parents... it was safer. We were brother and sister for a while. Then they smuggled me to England. I always thought he died in the war. My parents did, and then his mother, and then he went away with his father to do one of those things that it wasn't safe to talk about... the last thing that I ever heard was that something went wrong, but friends got me across the channel and put me with a family, and I worked for a while to get the money to come home... And now here we all are!"

"What was he like?"

"Maybe not much different." She smiles. "He doted on me. When we all lost everything, he made sure that I ate... he went hungry for me some nights, but he lied about it to me, and I believed him then. And I suspect that there are things he did that I would not name... but in the end we survived it all. Look how good he is..."

He does, in spite of and because of that ache. The Spy's ease with Michel is painfully sweet, how natural it is for him to cradle the boy and speak to him in a musical lilt.

"What I wouldn't give for one..." He sighs.

"You want children?"

"Yeah. Yeah, but... I mean, what are you gonna do, right? I never could've had my own, and..."

She nods. "Michel is the best thing ever to happen to me. I was never sick with him, isn't that strange? I thought for certain I would be-- that is how you know you are pregnant, yes? I was sick all the time before him, though. And then when I was carrying him, it stopped. And now I have him and the whole world is brighter. I would do nothing but have children all the time if it was up to me, I think, but then I would be overrun with them." She laughs.

He doesn't ask her then-- they haven't known each other nearly long enough, to ask a favour like that. But he wonders if she might, if the Spy asked her, carry a child for them.

They drive up to the house, and it's far enough from town to be quiet, to have plenty of space around it, and a good place for starting a garden. Everything that was promised.

"I don't need to look at any others." He says, and the Spy signs the papers with a broad grin while he hastily builds a fire in the fireplace.

It's a good way to celebrate buying the place, he thinks, lighting that first fire. It's certainly a good way to warm up a bit.

They move in, bit by bit, and not much in the house needs fixing up. It comes with two cats, they discover, a pair of animals that had been making their territory around an old dilapidated barn on the property, and who are only too happy to move their center of operations to the screened-in porch.

Minou is a big scarred tom tabby who turns into a sweetheart for Spy alone, and Puss is smaller, black with patches of white, and generally gregarious. He figures they must have had human owners once, and figures they must have been brothers.

"You should take 'em in to get fixed, before we have a paternity suit on our hands." The Sniper says, watching Spy smoke on the porch with Minou winding around his ankles.

"I don't know... I haven't seen any lady cats coming around."

"It's not a big deal for them, Spook, they're animals. Hell. It's not such a big deal anyway. The parts don't need to be productive to be fun." He chuckles.

"I'll call the vet, after the weekend. Tonight... Tonight is dinner at Anamarie's."

"Yeah."

"I was going to bake. I told her I would."

He sounds graver than the Sniper thinks baking calls for.

"You want an extra pair of hands?"

"I do." The Spy nods, putting out his cigarette and giving Minou a final pat.

"So what are we having?" The Sniper asks, running the water until it's hot and washing up.

"Fish, bread, fruit." The Spy shrugs. "Wine."

"Yeah, gotten used to that one." He laughs.

They spend the afternoon on bread, the Spy showing him how to braid it and then stepping back as the Sniper does a neater job of it. The Spy brushing on an egg wash, the Sniper hovering near the oven to soak up a little extra heat while the Spy makes tea.

"How warm are your hands?"

"Hm? Warm." The Spy shrugs, rolling his mug between his palms.

"Good. C'mere and put your hands up my shirt until my nipples unfreeze."

"Oh, pauvre bebe... Come on, it's practically spring."

"Since when is early February practically spring?" He grumbles, relaxing just a little as the Spy leans against his back and slips ceramic-warmed hands up beneath his undershirt, tenderly rubbing over his chest until a little of the chill-induced soreness fades.

"This year it's close enough." The Spy shrugs against him and kisses his shoulder. They rest against each other until the bread is done, and the Spy wraps it carefully in a tea-towel.

"Hate to see what you call a real winter if you think this is close enough to spring." The Sniper says, but when they get to Anamarie's for dinner, the house is warm enough that he forgets his complaints.


	26. Chapter Twenty Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the journey into WAFF-y kidfic begins in earnest.

Villers-Bretonneux is nice-- even if he can't get used to the cold that lingers on through March, he can get used to the town, to people who don't tell him he 'doesn't look Australian', people who smile broadly at him and ask him if he's there on holiday visiting the monument, and are more than helpful when they learn that no, he's moved there.

He enjoys getting used to the food, both what he and the Spy make around each other at home or eat at Anamarie's, and what he finds in the town proper when they do go out. And he absolutely loves the bookstore, with a small, carefully-stocked English-language section, where he finds a new Patrick White novel.

The proprietor smiles knowingly at him over half-moon glasses, after watching him with the Spy, and he's seen men walk and talk as closely as they do without any sense of impropriety. The bookseller doesn't give any of them the same knowing smile. He doesn't know if the discount is for being Australian or because of the Spy, and the old photo behind the counter of the bookseller arm in arm with another once-young man. He's not sure which is less uncomfortable, but once they really talk about literature, he's willing to accept the discounts as being merely for a friend.

It's the bookseller-- also a Michel, who smiles warmly when the Sniper says 'that's my nephew's name'-- who tells him about the museum. He can feel the Spy watching him, and can practically feel the man holding his breath, when directions are given.

"Suppose I can remember Rue Victoria, yeah." He nods, tone mild. He turns to give the Spy a smile. "What, am I making you late for something?"

The Spy relaxes, shaking his head. "Only if you decide to rush over today."

"Oh, no-- next month! Next month they put on the big to-do." Michel-the-bookseller insists. "And football starts, next month. I still go to watch, I am sure you can tell to look at me it has been many years since I have played."

"... Real football?"

He nods. "It isn't imaginary. No, no, Australian rules."

"Wouldn't mind watching." The Sniper grins. "Never used to play, myself... I was a scrawny kid, no one wanted me on their team."

The Spy takes his arm, smiling softly, and manages to remove him from the bookstore.

They buy wine-- or rather, the Spy does, frowning over several bottles before one meets his approval. One for home, because he'd rejected it so sadly for dinner at Anamarie's, and one to take. It isn't their usual night, but the Spy had objected to asking her on Friday.

It's much less formal, and it's the first time he's had anything other than fish at one of her dinners, the main dish for the evening a leek quiche.

After dinner, he lets the Spy talk to her in private, though he watches intently.

If they were strangers, he would have thought it was a marriage proposal-- the Spy had dropped down to one knee to play with little Michel, down at her feet, and hadn't bothered rising to ask. He sees the Spy turn to her and clasp one of her hands between both his own, can see the anguished anticipation written all over his face even in profile, and the way hers lights up before she nods and laughs and kisses his forehead.

He walks back to the kitchen where the Sniper is waiting, as if on air.

"She will. She will. She says it will make her happy to do it. You should have heard, she made it sound as if I was the one doing her a favor, and... and there-- I said, there is nothing I can ever do to repay this, but she says don't be silly. I am silly!" He snorts in disbelief at the thought, and the Sniper keeps his own mouth shut. "She... she said I would be good. I was already so responsible with a child at sixteen when I spent so much time watching her, and... And she said she thought you, too, she knew you wanted..."

He nods. "I told her I envied her a bit, having a kid. Didn't come close to asking her to have one. You told her about the eggs--?"

"I told her about the eggs."

"... Where did you tell her we got them?"

"I said you got them from Victoria, and they will have to ship from Australia, or we will have to go there to have the fertilization done. She didn't ask more."

"Safe to get it done anywhere. Once the Americans started sniffing around in vitro fertilization, our scientists had to jump in and say we'd got it down pat, any hospital ought to be able to."

"Well... can they ship them?"

He nods again. "Got specialized containers, they'll make it from Adelaide to Paris fine. She'd go far as Paris for it, that's only two hours... For a thing like this, she'd want a big hospital, yeah?"

"I would."

He wraps his arms around the Spy and leans into him, cheek to cheek.

He's not ready to celebrate being a dad just yet. There's always the chance it won't take. But he's ready to celebrate the fact that there really is a woman who's willing to carry the baby for them.

He has a lot to celebrate, if he stops to think. He's made enough peace with his parents, that with half the globe between them, he can breathe easy. He's glad not to have spent longer under their roof, with his father, but he's made enough peace. He has a home where no one knows who he used to have to be to the world, only who he is-- he has family there, thanks to the Spy, and a real friend who trades book recommendations and stories about living with a husband.

It's more than he ever thought he was going to have. He laughs, leaning heavily on the Spy as his knees threaten to give out on him, and then the Spy is laughing too, and holding him tight, kissing his cheeks.

The time they spend waiting for it to be real is hell, and he finds himself jumping at every phone call, instead of ignoring them as Spy's domain. He can't even make himself go down to watch the young men playing football, until the day he sees the Spy all but collapse after only a moment on the kitchen phone.

"It took." Spy says, receiver loose in his hand, and the Sniper is across the room before he's told his feet to take him there, and the Spy's face is between his palms, the Spy's mouth opening to his.

"Es-tu la?"

He fumbles to take the receiver from Spy, the two exchanging an embarrassed grin.

"Yeah. Yeah, we're-- Hey. Hi. Here, we're here. Just-- He was just giving me the good news. You feeling all right?"

"Marvelous!" Anamarie laughs-- at him, he's sure, but she never sounds unkind when she does. "You are going to be a father, how do you feel?"

"Good. Grateful. Excellent."

"I'm glad."

The Spy is leaning heavily on the counter, and he holds the receiver between them and tries to keep up as the two switch over to rapid French.

Spy brings flowers when they see her next, and an impossibly large box of very fancy chocolates. He's already learned how to feed and diaper Michel, back when the boy was small enough to need bottle-feeding, and before he ran from every attempt at diapering, and she walks the Sniper through the process as well, laughing and putting a finger to his lips when he tries to thank her again after.

"I could not be happier. First, this one thanks me as if he has not given me the entire world, saving my life when I was small, and now you... I love being pregnant. I can't wait for all the changes."

"I always thought it was... something women put up with for the sake of having kids. I didn't know anyone liked being pregnant."

"I do." She nods. "I told you I was sick often before Michel, and never with him?"

"A bit."

"Pain, too, in my joints... my wrists and my knees, mostly. And I was always tired. I could never find a doctor who could tell me anything, I stopped looking for one after a while and I just tried to live my life. It started when I was thirteen, I think... sometimes not so bad, sometimes terrible. And then, when I was carrying my baby, nothing hurt... well, maybe not nothing, but everyone made me think it would be terrifying, and instead... I just felt so calm with him, and so happy, and I stopped being sick all of the time. And I had a little person growing inside me-- and girlfriends said it was worth all the soreness and the sickness for that, but instead of being sore and sick, I was free. For the first time since becoming a woman, I was free, and nothing anyone ever told me prepared me for how wonderful it was to know I had this... this ability to nurture life."

He nods through her speech, dumbfounded. The idea that there were different ways of experiencing what his mother always made sound so universal was new. The idea that there were women who loved being pregnant not because of the attention and not because they'd get a baby, but because part of that state of being was good... that was still hard to fathom. He still had nightmares about being back in possession of a working uterus sometimes, and he couldn't imagine being so downright beatific if he was ever in her shoes.

Then again, it was nice knowing she didn't ever expect him to.

During the months that follow, they visit as often as possible, and never without something-- cut flowers, or the last thing the Spy had heard her mention craving.

He still hasn't called his parents-- he's not sure when he's supposed to tell people, is afraid to do it too early. He waits until she asks him about whether his own family knows, to decide it's all right to call them.

His father is perplexed at the news, his mother ecstatic. A grandchild, he decides, patches up a multitude of sins, at least in her book.

He tells them it'll be a surprise, when they ask if it's a boy or a girl. The nursery is greens and yellows, and he's already knitted a layette set in the undyed sock yarn his mother sent towards the end of winter.

She'd taught him, but he never thought it was too feminine a skill to shun-- his father could knit as well, though he didn't devote much time to it. It was just something you learned to do in case you ever needed it, especially growing up surrounded by sheep.

He likes making the baby things, sturdy and neutral and warm. It'll be a winter baby, after all, and he wants to be ready.

He planted a tree-- a bay laurel-- early in the pregnancy, out in the yard. The Spy had been out with him while he dug, laying out a vegetable garden, with the earth soft enough, but he'd gone inside quickly before the Sniper got around to fertilizing it.

"I realized I couldn't plant when the kid got here." He tells Anamarie, when she comes over to their house for once.

The Spy makes an immense fuss over her, during the tour of the new garden and the visit indoors, and she gives in and lets him, though she exchanges a few glances with the Sniper that let him know she appreciates the fact that he doesn't join in on it.

"Women have children, it doesn't make me special-- it certainly does not make me porcelain!" She laughs, when the Spy has left for the kitchen to get tea. "I was built to do it and I feel better than I have since just after Michel."

He nods. "How big is it?"

"Bigger. I just had my visit with the doctor-- I know the sex."

He waits until the Spy is back in the room, not sure he wants to know. The Spy does.

"A girl." She smiles, taking the Sniper's hand and placing it over the swell of her belly. "She's right here."

Once the Spy isn't holding a fully-laden tea tray, he places his hand as close as possible.

"A girl." Spy breathes.

"I told my parents it was going to be a surprise."

"Did you want to be surprised?" The Spy frowns. "I'm sorry-- I like to know everything."

"No-- No, I don't need to be. I'd rather not tell them yet, though. The nursery's yellow, and... I mean, they'd... They'd go overboard if they knew what to buy for, that's all."

The Spy nods, understanding. "Of course. Well, they can send teddy bears and the like, things that work for either, without going overboard, I am sure."

"Thanks."

The Sniper continues to tell people that they don't know yet, after that, and the things he brings into the house are gender neutral. The Spy buys a few things with yellow roses, and a patchwork stuffed animal with both pink and blue, and doesn't give away the ruse.

"Do you want an English name for her, or French? I mean, she is growing up here... but if there's one you like, everyone will know her Daddy is Australian, it would be fine."

"Dunno. Haven't thought about what to name it. Could just see what comes to mind."

"Her." The Spy says firmly. "We know that now, and we ought to have at least an idea about what to name her."

"We don't really, though, do we? I mean, I'm... I turned out like-- I mean, what if the kid's like me?"

"Then we will be flexible when the time comes. But unless I am told differently by our child-- and our child will know we will understand-- then she is a her."

"Spook--"

"I like the nursery as it is. And I will not force any notions on her, and if you don't want pink, I will not buy pink, but my daughter has a gender!"

"I don't want to wind up making the same mistakes my parents made with me." He folds his arms. "That's all."

"Do you really think you would? Of course you will not. Mon grand, my chair is not an 'it'. My table is not an 'it'. So how much more do you think my child will not be an 'it'? You can't just take sex away completely until she is old enough to declare herself, don't you think that is far more confusing?"

"No." He clings to it stubbornly, even realizing the Spy is probably right on that one. He means to change the subject, when he asks a question. "You're saying there's no way to say 'it' that isn't 'he' or 'she', then?"

The Spy's expression hardens. "Not in French. Of course, there is always 'that thing', but anyone who called my child 'that thing' would be unwelcome in my house, and I do not consider my position unreasonable."

"N-no. No, of course-- I just don't want to screw it up if the kid's like me."

"She is half yours, but she isn't you. You talk like you think she will be because you are one of her parents, but you are the child of your parents, they are both normal!"

There's a silent moment, and he can see the Spy's expression collapse as he realizes what he's said, but he doesn't care.

"So I'm not normal now? Good to know." He snaps, turning and striding out of the room.

"Cher, you know I did not mean--"

"No, I heard you loud and clear."

"Statistically average!" He follows. "You can admit that is a lot for me to translate to myself in the middle of an argument!"

"Yeah? Never heard you mistranslate something for yourself before!" He keeps walking, until he's at the opposite end of the house, in the formal sitting room where they rarely spend time on their own.

"I didn't mean it like that!" The Spy catches him when he has no house left to escape to, taking his arm.

He's not ready to turn around, he doesn't want to see genuine penitence. He wants to feed the ball of hurt sitting under his heart, wants to be angry because before that misstep, the Spy was winning the argument, and now the Spy is apologizing.

"Cher?"

He grunts.

"We've never really fought about something real before." The Spy says quietly. "And... I have let myself get a little lazy, living here again. I haven't argued in English in a long time. I am sorry."

"Yeah, you ought to be."

"I would never have... I don't think you are abnormal. I would say you are as normal as I am, but that is not exactly a compliment, either..."

He does smile at that, sitting down on the stiff, formal sofa, the one he doesn't sink into like the one they have in the back of the house.

The Spy curls up across the other end, his head in the Sniper's lap, his grip a little too hard on the Sniper's leg.

"I am so, so sorry."

"I know y'are, Spook. I never asked you to call me normal, anyway." He rests his hand on the Spy's head, scritching gently at his scalp as if he were a cat.

"It wasn't to lash out at you. It wasn't something I think. I adore you, you know that."

"I know that."

"I feel just awful."

"Well, quit it, before you make me feel awful."

"I already made you feel awful!" He buries his face against the Sniper's thigh and takes in a deep breath. "I wanted to never do that to you."

"Come on, now, you're taking it harder than I did."

"You're just saying that." He says, words smothered in the Sniper's jeans.

"I was hurt. But we were fighting. People get hurt in fights. We're done fighting now, aren't we?"

The Spy makes no answer, and the Sniper sighs.

It stung, but the sting faded once he let it. If the fight had been about anything else, he might have held onto it longer, but the man was looking out for the interests of their child, after all, and if the Spy thought of him as abnormal, he doubts they'd be settling down and having a kid to begin with.

"Make-up sex?" He suggests.

The Spy lifts his head, with a ghost of his usual leer, still touched with sorrow.

The Spy moves to the floor, to kneel between his thighs, and he still loves watching the Spy suck him off. There's something so rewarding about having the visual match the sensation, instead of merely accompanying it, and the things the Spy does with his foreskin now that he has one are incredible.

He'd offered to get himself done without, since the Spy didn't have one, and he wasn't sure if the Spy expected him to be cut or not. He's glad the Spy insisted on his keeping it-- glad enough, when it's just the Spy's lips nibbling at it, and gladder still when the Spy stands and drops his own trousers and lines them up so that he can stretch the skin over the head of his own cock.

"That's good," He gasps, sliding his hand over his cock, and then down the Spy's, before keeping his grip where they met in the middle.

"It's-- oh, good, do that-- it is not the filthiest thing I can think of, but I do like it."

"What's the filthiest thing you can think of?" He chuckles.

The Spy shakes his head. "The filthiest thing I can think of, we are never going to do, mon grand."

He grins, stroking tiny circles at the base of the Spy's cockhead. He likes the idea of the Spy having thoughts too filthy to go through with-- he likes the thought of the Spy having filthy thoughts in general, and between the minute slide of the heads of their cocks and the Spy's hands traveling across his body, he comes all too soon.

"I do have one filthy thought..." The Spy says.

He's beautiful, standing there with his face and chest flushed, with sweat-spiked hair and dark eyes, with the Sniper's come dripping down his still-hard cock.

The Sniper drops to his own knees, sucking the Spy down. The synthetic stuff is weird, not quite like any man he's ever tasted, not that the list is long. The Spy has never complained about it, and maybe it isn't so bad. After all, it's something his body does create now, even if by all rights it shouldn't. Still, he's happy enough to have the taste of the Spy's release follow, prefers it.

"That's our first time in the sitting room, yeah?" He grins, pulling himself back up onto the sofa and buttoning his jeans.

The Spy moves back to his lap, a frown tugging at his lips until the Sniper's hand is in his hair.

"Make-up sex means we're made up." The Sniper reminds him.

"All right."

"Spook..."

"Yes?"

"Before... I mean, were you-- Were you ever...?"

"Was I ever 'that thing'? Yes. No child ought to be."

"Oh."

"Yes." The Spy doesn't say anything else about it, though his expression remains faraway.

"Er, um... je... je suis des-- vraiment desole."

The Spy sits up, looking at him for a long moment, and he's not sure whether he's struggling not to cry... or not to laugh.

"You have nothing to apologize for, mon amour. And your accent is atrocious."

He smiles, glad they're back to normal after the miscommunications and crossed purposes. "If she's like me, then... then we'll tell her before she gets too old that-- that I was born a little... a little girl."

"Are you sure? Children repeat things."

"They can learn not to, if it's important. And if she can't, well... I mean, who's going to believe it?"

"All right."

"That way, she'll know she can tell us anything." He nods.

"Would you be happier with a boy?"

He thinks about it, for a long time. Would he? Would a little girl, a real, honest, girly little girl, be interested in the things he had to teach?

"I'll be happy if she's healthy. There are things I don't know about girls, real ones. But there are things I know too much about, and that'll come in handy. I... I wouldn't mind having a little girl think the world of her old dad, you know? And..."

"And?"

"I think my parents would like it-- and we're not telling 'em yet! But... maybe this isn't my chance to fix all the mistakes they made with me by raising a kid any better than they did. Maybe it's a chance to let them get to know a little girl who likes being called 'princess'. I don't know. I could love a little girl, of course I could."

"Good."

"Laurel."

"Hm?"

"You asked me about names. Laurel. It's... it's the tree I planted for her. And I like it, for a name."

"Laurel Avigail."

"What's Avigail?"

The Spy leveled him with a look that couldn't manage sternness for very long. "I knew you didn't even look at the books of names, and I even ordered one with all the meanings in English. It means 'father's joy'... I thought it was appropriate. She has two of us."

"Laurel Avigail." He nods.

They tell Anamarie, when they see her next. She's still serene as ever, placing their hands and telling them 'it's your baby, touch, touch!', and she sits between them on her sofa while they bend low to speak to the baby and her husband tends the stove.

Sniper's parents send some things-- a red ball, and a grey bear, and a white baby afghan, and a little wooden crocodile with wheels and a pull-string. The Spy orders a stuffed kangaroo that's as big as a real one and places it in the nursery.

The Sniper names it Jenna. The Spy nods along, until he admits that it's not really a creative name.

"Yes... you know, with your history, I am surprised I asked you to name our daughter. Your doll's name was 'Baby', your cat's name might as well be 'cat', and now the kangaroo is practically just 'lady kangaroo'."

"Yeah, well, I named the kid after a tree, so maybe you shouldn't have let me." He jokes.

"... My cat's name is 'cat'." The Spy laughs.

"Wait, really? No, your cat's got a name."

"Well, yes, but it's... you know, it is just the name of any cat, 'Minou'. It really isn't very different from 'Puss'."

"We're both terrible. It's a good thing you got that book, luv, or I'd feel sorry for our kid."

"She's going to be all right. At least it is a tree that already has a woman's name."

They end the night standing a while in the nursery, before going next door to bed. They've taken to ending every night that way, as the pregnancy has worn on. At first it was merely nesting, putting everything in its place, but as winter draws nearer and the due date with it, there's less that needs doing, and more their desire to soak in the space and the idea that it belongs to a baby.

"Come on, Daddy, bedtime." The Spy yawns, looping his arm through the Sniper's. "Sleep now, in a month and a half we won't get too many chances."

"We'll sleep when she does. Babies do sleep, I'm almost sure of it."

The Spy slants him a curious smile, and he sighs, opening the door and letting himself be led to the master bedroom. "Of course I meant to say 'coming, Papa'."

"Of course you did."

The Spy loves autumn, but he misses sharing a single set of pyjamas in the summer, himself in the shirt and a pair of his own boxers if he felt like bothering and the Sniper in the pants and an undershirt. Now, the Sniper bundles himself up in layers of cotton and flannel.

It's not all bad, of course-- he rather likes being used as a space heater.

"When we have her home..." He sighs, pulling back the covers and sliding into bed, and into the Sniper's arms. "Imagine it, in the family room with a roaring fire. You'll lie on the sofa with your head in my lap and a baby on your chest, and a blanket over you. You would be warm enough like that, wouldn't you, with the both of us?"

"Darlin', I'd be so warm with the both of you." He grins, giving the Spy a squeeze.


	27. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And they lived happily ever after.

It's autumn again, crisp and chilly, but the oven throws off enough heat while the Sniper checks on the roast. As long as he doesn't leave the house, he can always find someplace warm enough to settle.

It doesn't feel like it could be autumn already-- it still feels like it was only yesterday that they were pacing the waiting room and asking each other how long a baby takes to be born... The Spy had been burning through his last pack of cigarettes, and the Sniper had bummed one or two, or maybe three, and they'd answered in a confused and confusing jumble when the nurse asked who the father was.

It had been a lot to adjust to, and all of it changed so rapidly. The Spy had done the feedings, at first, could find that natural position with the bottle that the Sniper was never comfortable with, but he always stepped in to burp her after. Between the two of them, he was the only one who didn't own a single shirt that couldn't be spit up all over. It was a division of labour they were happy with.

That had changed as well, of course, now that she was no longer so small he could hold her balanced along one forearm with her head cupped in his palm. Now that she was crawling at speed and starting to toddle... Now, of course, she could ask for a bottle and have it handed to her-- and the Sniper had learned pretty easily what babbled sounds were her attempts at 'biberon'-- 'bottle' and 'goodbye' she picked up in French, 'up' and 'hello' in English, and she would look out at Minou on the porch and say 'M'ou!'.

It would be silly to be jealous of the cat. Anamarie had assured him that some sounds were easier than others, and that the 'm' sounds were bound to come before the 'da's.

"Cher?" The Spy's voice from the family room has an urgent note, though not a worried one.

He takes the peas off the heat and trusts the roast won't burn in the time it takes him to see what the matter is.

"Need help with the little nipper?" He asks, coming into the room.

Spy is holding Laurel's hands, looking at her intently. "Again, ma belle."

She turns to look up at the Sniper, eyes bright-- a stormy blue, closer to the Spy's today than to his, but he's seen them shift often enough, dark to light. She has his nose, definitely, and curls that the Spy admitted were like his own when he was very young, and every time he looks at her he could swear he's seeing her for the first time and falling in love all over again.

"Up!" She demands, letting go of the Spy's hands to raise her arms to the Sniper.

"Oh, of course." He chuckles, coming around the sofa to lift her up onto one hip. He smirks over at the Spy. "This is what you've got me burning dinner for?"

"Honestly, when you were in the kitchen..." He sighs, shaking his head. He gets to his feet, coming to stand close to them both, one hand on the Sniper's back and the other gently covering their little girl's head. "Laurel? Can you show Daddy?"

"Daddy!" She repeats eagerly, and the Spy grins up at him.

He's floored by it. He's been waiting for it, since she started working at real words, and there it was.

"That's right, lamb. Daddy's here." He lifts her up higher and kisses her cheek, and tickles a giggle out of her.

"I'll peek in on dinner if you need me to." The Spy offers, but he feels more inclined to linger in the doorway, to watch them together. There's such a warmth in seeing his family, the softness on the Sniper's face that exists for her alone and the way two words from him can quiet almost any tantrum.

She'd said 'Papa' before 'Daddy', but he doesn't have any illusions-- she's Daddy's girl, and he couldn't be happier. There are things that he does for and with her, there are times she responds to him-- perhaps times she lights up the same way, but watching them together, he just draws such a sense of comfort from seeing how completely they adore each other, and knowing that if he asks for it, he can have two smiles turn his way, from two people he adores completely.

"Daddy's here..." The Sniper sits down on the sofa with her in his lap, her little hands clinging and grabbing at the neck of his sweater as she cuddles up close.

He'll take care of mashing the peas in a while-- it's one of the few things he knows he does a better job of in the kitchen-- but he trusts the Spy to get the roast. For now... for now, his daughter has asked for him by name for the first time, and she's got him for as long as her attention span demands.


End file.
